Unboxing the 360 Slim

So I got my new X-Box 250Gb Slim home yesterday. To be honest it's still quite a heavy wee beasty in the box. Thanks to the staff at GAME for giving me a bag so big I could've carried the store home!

First thing of note. The box is much nicer to open and closes properly after you've taken everything out. I really hated the stupid flappy design of the last one.

It's actually not that much smaller. The PSU is smaller but probably just as thick. Other than that it looks nice. The shiny black effect isn't quite up to the quality of my original PS3 but it's nice enough.

Having plugged it all in I was able to use the transfer cable to copy all my saves and games across to the new machine from my old 20Gb HDD (Big shout out to Geoff who made this possible!) and it was soon up and running.. One problem here was that the new on off switch is so touch sensitive I managed to turn the 360 off by accident whilst plugging in a USB device (in this case said transfer lead) which could be annoying if you lost game progress whilst trying to plug a second controller in.. but I can't see it cropping up to often.

I was soon up and running and wirelessly connected to my new (Stylishly Black) Netgear Router. I tested Blur and Forza 3 and had absolutely no problems at all. No noticeable lag or lack of performance compared to the wired connection of my old 360.

Talking of which, if you'd asked me yesterday morning, if my old 360 was noisey I'd of said that when I have the TV on at a reasonable volume and my hi-fi playing I can barely hear it. Turns out I'd of been wrong and I'd of just gotten used to the background hum. Even running a game off the DVD drive the new console is spookily quiet.. so quiet in fact that it's a bit un-nerving. I even ended up turning the TV way down. The PS3, even sat idle on the XMB, sounds noisey in comparison and I'd of sworn that ran silently before.

My only other complaint would be that the disc drive tray itself is still a bit cheap although this is offset by the lovely touch sensitive eject button and the wee noise it makes to let you know it's working.

Having ran it all night I noticed that the left hand vent on the console (the side that's next to my Sky+ Box (also black fact fans!) was very cool. Possible cooler than ambient temperature. The vents in the top and the right where running quite hot. I guess that means it's cooling itself very effectively? Although I do worry that the huge vents in the top will let a lot of dust in and that could be a console killer too. Only time will tell.

Overall I'm very happy with the new machine.

Purchase Power

I was disappointed to read that the Publishers behind No More Heroes weren't going to invest in any more new IPs. Whilst you can see their point when traditional gamers fail to support innovative, adult (I use the word in the loosest sense to indicate child unfriendly) software on the Wii it's still something of a shame when those games have been receiving good reviews. From my point of view these sort of titles seem to head bargain binward very quickly.. presumably cos they're not selling well. It's a chicken and egg situation that I don't pretend to know the answer to.

Anyway I happened to spy a mint pre-owned copy in Game for £20 which (less my £2.50 reward points) seemed to good an opportunity to miss.

I also pre-ordered a new 360 Slim. The main reasons being that my 360's disc drive seems to be playing up and that I'm still using my original 20Gb HDD which is struggling to keep up. I only have 2Gb free and I'd like to be able to install games that I'm playing a lot. Also anything that makes for a bit more room under the TV and runs quietly has got to be good right? I'm going to donate the old one to charity too so it's win win.