For many gamers, $300 or even $350 is too expensive for their tastes. After all, that’s what the current price of the the Xbox 360 premium console is at, and $300 is what the original Xbox cost originally. Costing significantly more than its predecessor, the Xbox 360 does offer far more features and power than the original, but many people were not expecting it to cost $400 at launch. Regardless, there is a cheaper alternative for playing your favorite Xbox 360 games like The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion and Bioshock. With the Xbox 360 core console, you can sacrifice a few features for big savings.
No Hard Drive, No Problem
The Xbox 360 core console lacks an internal hard drive, but it still has enough memory to save games, which is the most important feature of internal memory on game consoles anyway. Gone are the days of memory cards, and you never have to worry about losing or breaking all of your saved games. By giving up the 20 Gb of hard drive space found in the premium console model, you’ll be saving $50. Combine that with the fact that you can easily purchase an external hard drive separately, and you can easily see why it makes sense to go with the Xbox 360 core console instead. If you think you’ll miss the 20 Gb of hard drive space, you can buy an 80 Gb external hard drive for the same price.
There are so many great titles available for the Xbox 360 game console that you’re really missing out on some really fun experiences if you don’t own one. The Xbox 360 core console plays all the same games and produces the same fantastic graphics, and you’ll be saving $50 over the more expensive version while you’re at it. One of the bigger downsides of the Xbox 360 core console is becoming apparent because the new 60 Gb Xbox 360 models have Netflix support, something you will miss out on. Still, if you are content to watch movies on your PC or have them shipped to you, then this won’t be a problem for you at all.
If you’ve looked forward to games like Grand Theft Auto 4 and Halo 3, then now is the time to go purchase an Xbox 360 core console. It has all of the necessary features to let you play the games you want, and those 720p and better graphics look great on HDTVs. If $250 is still too much for you, then you can always check out refurbished consoles for even greater savings.
