Adding an Xbox 360 - 4gb or 500gb ?

I'll be picking up an Xbox 360 this coming holiday; there's some great
Black Friday sales at the Microsoft Store, and while I could probably get a used one even cheaper from Craigslist, I'd be happier with a new one that comes with a warranty.

At any rate, how big of a difference does the 4gb vs 500gb harddrive size make? It seems like a massive disparity (over 100x size). Are all games on disc transferred to the harddrive on installation, like the Xbox One? How many mb/gb do the 360 games take
up anyway? I'll be buying it just for the available DDR & dancepad games available for the Xbox 360, and not much else. Maybe get a Kinect ver 1 for it later on, but not at first.

Are there any other differences, aside from harddrive size? Should I be okay saving $70 buying the 4gb model, or should I bite the bullet and get the 500gb one?

TIA

:)

 

Forced to buy hard drive to play Battlefield 4

Adding to the 4GB console advertised as an HDD: This is 100% false. I purchased my 4GB Xbox 360 S in 2012. It said "4GB" on the box. Nowhere did it list a hard drive or state the 4GB was an HDD.

 

Can't find Hard Drive I want (help please?)

The Xbox One comes with a 500gb. But the highest for the 360 is the 320gb.

FYI, the 4gb is internal flash memory and not a hard drive. So if you purchase that console you can't actually remove the 4gb.

 

I'd go the 500gb model if I were you. You don't have to install games on the hard drive but you can download free games with your gold account and they do take up quite a bit of room. There is no difference in the actual 360 itself though.

 

500GB is a big difference. With 4GB you barely have any space for games and movies. You'll have enough space for save files and some DLC, but that's it. If you want, you can grab a 4GB console, and buy a 250GB HDD for the 360 as well, it should be fairly
cheaper. That is if you want to pay less. But if you want 500GB get the 500GB model as you'll have space for games, movies, and even installing games.

 

Hmm, I think I'm leaning towards that 4gb model still, seeing as how I'll be getting games on disc and I really don't do the DLC thing much at all. Good points, though.

Now, when you talk about room for movies - is that for video files I might have already have, or if I buy a video from Xbox Video it gets stored locally? (I assumed it just streamed, under a permanent license)

Also, I don't need a separate Live Gold subscription for the 360 if it's registered on the same account as my One, right?

Thanks for taking the time to answer my numpty q's.

 

An important note is not so much the size of the HDD but that the 4Gb is a Flash Drive. Some Games Features will not work via the 4Gb Flash Drive and require the use of a HDD. Adding an External Drive (Flash or not) will also
not work for those Features.

It will vary Game per Game and it will be stated on the Games box if a HDD is required. Other than that, it's just storage space for Installing Games (completely Optional for most Games with exceptions). As noted some Games (such as BF3/ BF4 and such) will
require a HDD (will not work from the 4Gb Flash Drive).

 

[quote user="ZenSteve"]I'll be picking up an Xbox 360 this coming holiday; there's some great

Black Friday sales at the Microsoft Store,[/quote]They're ok.

Huge.

No.

2GB to 18GB.

Ah. Then 4GB
may be a better choice - no moving parts for storage.

The 4GB, as noted, is not a HDD. It's a USB Memory Unit. There are games that will not install to MU, not that there's enough free
space on the 4GB to install most games to.

You're better off with the 500GB model assuming you're going to do more than DDR. If you're not, then
the 4GB model should be fine. You can always add a 500GB HDD later:
http://www.microsoftstore.com/store/msusa/en_US/pdp/500GB-Media-Hard-Drive-for-Xbox-360/productID.307070400

 

Zen we understand that you don't do dlc and such but you do know that if you have a gold account, Microsoft give away 2 free, full games every month on the 360 that you can download. Some of them are great games and best of all THEY ARE FREE! If you want
to take advantage of this great offer, you will need that bigger hard drive!

 

Do what you like, but over time you may come to regret not having a Harddrive.

One benifit is that Installing disc based games to the HDD saves a lot of wear on your optical drive. Sure youll still have to load the disc, but lets say you play the game for 4 hours. That means that the optics is only used for something less than a 1/3
of that time.

 

also even if you get rid of gold later the free games with gold you download are yours to keep even after you get rid of gold there yours forever go with the 500 gb its worth the value cause to buy a add on one later will end up costing more

 

K, after all that the 500gb seems to be the version to get. Thanks for your thoughts & opinions, all.

 

I would go for 500GB. To make use of it, install all of your disc games to the HDD. You'll still need the game disc to play, but after the security check, installed games run entirely from the hard drive. Hard drives last a heck of a lot longer than optical
drives do.

 

To be fair a 500gb console will be more than you ever need on a 360, now on a one that's a hole different ball game haha.

 

I'd go for 500GB too. The Games With Gold games on the 360 are better than they are on the One as the 360 has been around longer, so you often get full disc-based games and not just smaller XBLA-type titles, plus you can keep them after your Gold expires
too, which you can't do on the Xbox One.

Also, you can optionally install any disc-based game in full, so that means the disc drive doesn't spin when you're playing (quieter/less wear and tear on the drive) and it usually means faster loading times too as reading from the HDD is faster than reading
from the optical drive. If you delete an installed game on the 360 it doesn't delete your game save, so you can go back to playing from disc again if you want to. It's not the same as the One where the disc is really just another method of getting the bits
on to your hard drive and all games have to be installed.