TANK
Shared on Thu, 02/02/2006 - 15:57That Xbox logo on your accessories means that you're paying at least double for your product. Making way accross the 360 news sites today is this new Datel 4 gig USB drive. It's only 2 inches square so it's no doubt based on the Hitachi micro-drive, the same drive in the iPod mini.
Now the price of this Datel micro-drive in a fancy external shell and USB cable is around $150 us. I've seen the same thing advertised at frys for round 80 bucks, Seagate just launched a 5 gig one for $99 MSRP non xbox branded. You can't do anything special with this Datel drive, if you could use it to store save games too then maybe it would be worth 150. But you can't, it doesn't give you any more functionality than connecting any other external USB storage device. YOu can only use it for pics and music. So why is it worth paying twice the amount for just because it's got an Xbox logo on it?
For that matter, for 150 bucks you can get a heck of a lot of storage. You can get 160 gig regular size hard drive and probably an 80 gigs laptop size drive, Both in an external usb shell ready to plug into your xbox360.
I have a problem with the 64 meg carts being 40 bucks. For $40 i can get a 512meg flash drive. For that matter if i watch sales i can get a 1 gig SD flash card for 40 bucks. So why then should this 64 meg cart be so expensive? No way would i own TWO of these like i do if they didn't allow me to save my 360 content/games to it. But I at least ebay'd the ones i bought so i got 2 for 50 bucks rather than 1 for 40. I don't feel quite as ripped off.
Then I was thinking we saw this with the Xbox accessories as well. For example a 20 foot Cat5 network cable goes for 15 bucks xbox branded, you can get the same thing for 8 bucks non branded that does the exact same thing.
Xbox wireless 801.11g acces point adapter, $100. Non xbox-branded $60. Granted the xbox one can be configured on the xbox (but only the xbox) where as a non-branded one needs to be configured on a PC (although that's also a plus, it's not locked to the xbox).
There's other examples but I think that's good. The moral of my blog is this. With USB devices and networking devices chances are you can save money and get a non-xbox branded device instead. Unless it's offering some xbox specific feature that a non-branded device can't offer, they're not worth the extra $.
Now the price of this Datel micro-drive in a fancy external shell and USB cable is around $150 us. I've seen the same thing advertised at frys for round 80 bucks, Seagate just launched a 5 gig one for $99 MSRP non xbox branded. You can't do anything special with this Datel drive, if you could use it to store save games too then maybe it would be worth 150. But you can't, it doesn't give you any more functionality than connecting any other external USB storage device. YOu can only use it for pics and music. So why is it worth paying twice the amount for just because it's got an Xbox logo on it?
For that matter, for 150 bucks you can get a heck of a lot of storage. You can get 160 gig regular size hard drive and probably an 80 gigs laptop size drive, Both in an external usb shell ready to plug into your xbox360.
I have a problem with the 64 meg carts being 40 bucks. For $40 i can get a 512meg flash drive. For that matter if i watch sales i can get a 1 gig SD flash card for 40 bucks. So why then should this 64 meg cart be so expensive? No way would i own TWO of these like i do if they didn't allow me to save my 360 content/games to it. But I at least ebay'd the ones i bought so i got 2 for 50 bucks rather than 1 for 40. I don't feel quite as ripped off.
Then I was thinking we saw this with the Xbox accessories as well. For example a 20 foot Cat5 network cable goes for 15 bucks xbox branded, you can get the same thing for 8 bucks non branded that does the exact same thing.
Xbox wireless 801.11g acces point adapter, $100. Non xbox-branded $60. Granted the xbox one can be configured on the xbox (but only the xbox) where as a non-branded one needs to be configured on a PC (although that's also a plus, it's not locked to the xbox).
There's other examples but I think that's good. The moral of my blog is this. With USB devices and networking devices chances are you can save money and get a non-xbox branded device instead. Unless it's offering some xbox specific feature that a non-branded device can't offer, they're not worth the extra $.
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