The all new Xbox 360!

The new Xbox 360 landed on singapore shores mid-July this year. One would ask: What’s new about it? Well first thing you’ll notice is its slick new design. Its slimmer and comes in a glossy black finish. Its absolutely gorgeous. That green glow of the power button against that glossy black finish makes you think its powered by kryptonite. Its really quite a looker and will send a gamer’s heart a flutter, especially an Xbox 360 owner. Microsoft should have made this glossy black finish standard on the old (read:original) Xbox 360. I’m sure there are a lot of original Xbox 360s out there that are now more of the color beige than white.

The new Xbox 360 is more than a looker. It now comes with a 250GB hard drive. That’s more than enough for downloading and storing games, game add-ons and more. The new Xbox 360 is also “whisper quiet” as stated in their ad. I don’t know about you but I don’t really find the original Xbox 360 noisy unless its right beside when you’re playing. You couldn’t here it over the sound of gunfire (in a video game that is haha). Anyway quiet is good.

Now you’re wondering is that it? Of course not. I think one of the more exciting things about the new Xbox 360 besides its looks is that it now has a built-in Wi-Fi. Yeeeeeey!!! No more wires! When connecting to Xbox Live that is. But what puts the “new” in the new Xbox 360 is that it’s Kinect ready.

Kinect ready? Yup, Kinect ready. It basically transforms your body movement into game play. It’s similar to the Wii and Playstation Move. But what makes the Kinect different is you don’t use any controllers. YOU ARE the controller. More specifically your body movements control the game. Isn’t that exciting?! Sure you’ll feel a little silly at first. It will feel like the first time you talked on you’re mobile phone using a bluetooth headset. But hey, that means no controllers flying out of your hands and hitting someone or your much loved TV. The Kinect device is sold separately and will be available in November with a slew of kinect games of course.

Editor’s note: For those who don’t know Kinect, check out the video on kinect below.

One major thing missing with this new Xbox 360 is a blu-ray drive. I would have thought they would have incorporated this already with the new Xbox. The Playstation had this for quite some time now. Anyway it still is primarily a gaming device, and blu-ray has not catched-up with the masses yet. Besides, a blu-ray drive will certainly up the price of the new Xbox 360.

Now that you’re familiar with the new Xbox360, the question is should I buy one? The simple answer is no. This still feels like the old Xbox 360 but with the bells and whistles. That’s why the name remains the same, except with the word “new”.  You can still play the new games with your old Xbox 360, even the new Kinect games, but you’ll need a separate power supply for the Kinect device. But if you want to jump in to motion-controlled gaming or your Xbox 360 really feels old, by all means yes. I just wonder if you bought one, after a year would you still call it the “new” Xbox 360? hmmm….

I think they’ve come full circle with the name Xbox 360 (pun intended).  If you do intend to buy the new Xbox 360 and the Kinect device, just a word of caution, don’t let the neighbors see you when you’re playing 😀

Gambit