Did you know Sony makes the XBox Slim?


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While the Xbox 360 had a lot of great points as a gaming console, it had its share of habitually annoying negatives which made any news of an upgrade something that was eagerly anticipated. It wasn?t anticipated enough that anyone thought it was going to steal the thunder at E3 (Electronic Entertainment Expo), but that wound up being exactly what it did. Given the unofficial moniker of ?Xbox Slim? for the time being, a few key improvements were made to get gamers excited.

The biggest thing for most people wasn?t so much the changes to create a more compact unit, but eliminating the ?Red ring of death.? This sounded like incredible news as gamers suddenly believed, even if just for a second, that crashes were a thing of the past. What Sony somewhat glossed over is they didn?t actually fix the problem creating crashes, they just changed the color that would signal a crash. Now gamers will curse the ?Green ring of death.?

The noise reduction measures taken are however something brag about. The reduction of ambient noise from the consoles fan cooling unit is worth noting. While the engine noises didn?t really ruin game play on the old unit, it didn?t add to the experience being pleasurable either. It may be small thing at the moment, but once you realize that fan isn?t audibly rumbling every 15 minutes it will be a nice thing.

Increasing the hard drive to 250GB is a big deal however. Storage is always a problem so anything to increase that has to be a good thing - especially since it isn?t going to be absurdly reflected in the sticker price when it hit?s the shelves. The touch sensitive eject buttons are a nice touch, but in the grand scheme of things not much more than a novelty so far as upgrades go. It is nice that someone was thinking of minor conveniences to add though.

What cannot be downplayed is the port for the new Kinect motion controller which was also debuted at E3 along with a host of other little goodies to take Xbox Slim to the next level. Adding in HDMI and WiFi is a huge deal, especially since they are maintaining the traditional ethereal port as well. The unit was boosted to 5 USB ports as well as an AV cable port as well. More options is always a good thing when it comes to this end of the console.

The best piece of good news for gamers is that some things saved on the ?old? Xbox 360 can migrate to the Xbox Slim via a separately sold cable as the Xbox Slim has data transfer software built into the unit. The bad news is what you cannot transfer are memory modules and hard drives. You win some, you lose some. The cable is believed to cost around $20, but a knockoff will likely follow soon after release for less.

Sony is stating they are making getting the Xbox Slim out quickly a priority, and judging by how badly they are hemorrhaging cash they will likely move fast. If they would move as fast getting Kinect out it would make a huge difference in sales most likely, but the current best estimate is that you will have to wait 3-4 months after Xbox Slim hit?s the shelves to get Kinect.

http://www.helium.com/items/1866490-e3-2010-a-look-at-the-xbox-360-slim

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Wow, nice fail article. From the author's profile:

My name is Amanda and I am a Senior Steward as well as the co-channel steward

for the Relationships and Families channel as well as Style and Beauty right here on Helium!

I really don't think she should be writing any more tech articles. :laugh:

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Sony dosn't make the Xbox. Imagine you're Microsoft, would you a) Choose your huge competitor to build your product, or b) Choose someone else?

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they are maintaining the traditional ethereal port as well

Don't forget your ethereal port, where you plug into the ether (while on ether?)

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Don't forget your ethereal port, where you plug into the ether (while on ether?)

It's so you can tap into the spirit world and play online with ghosts.

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For all those slow people out there that still haven't caught on; the author of the article isn't well informed with gaming and thus wrote Sony are the manufacturers of the Xbox 360 Slim.

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Don't (or didn't, I'm not up to date on gaming) Nintendo own SEGA?

If by own you mean "bought", no. If by own, you mean "omgugotpwn'd", then yes.

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