
Got a question for Ask X3F? Maybe you have a story or some information you'd like to share? Send it all to ask [at] xbox360fanboy [dawt] com.
So I was talking with some of my friends about changing the hard drives in their PSTriples (I'm not a 'phobe, some of my best friends are PS people), and lamenting the redonkulous prices of the hard drives for the 360. Is there any way to use a 3rd party hard drive on my 360, like maybe an external one connected through the USB port?
Gamertag locked.
Yes, it is possible to use your own hard drive in an Xbox 360. The only thing USB hard drives (or flash drives) can be used for is playing properly formatted video and audio files. Game saves are out of the question. Now, it is possible to use a non-official drive to store game saves, but it will take some work to do so. In other words, you'll have to be comfortable with hacking and modding.
The process involved essentially tricks your 360 into thinking an off the shelf hard drive is actually an official hard drive. The only downside, which results from the "tricking" method, is that you're still confined to a maximum of 120 gigabytes of space. Should MS ever decide to release a larger HDD, the same hack could be used to increase the allowable size accordingly.
As usual, we must remind everyone out there that cracking open your 360 automatically voids the warranty, after which Microsoft won't repair your console even if you pay them. As such, we don't recommend you do so. Any modifications are done at your own risk. If you'd like to learn about the above mentioned procedure for educational purposes, you may do so by clicking here.
I have a question. Do you think they'll ever start putting in regional filters for multiplayer in games? p2p is great in theory if people are close together, but being in the UK come 7pm we cant help but have all games dominated by americans.. meaning our own connections suffer because 99% of the games are hosted somewhere in the states. Having a simple regional filter would easily sort this and allow us constant lagless games, so what harm could an optional filter make? not only would it enhance gaming experiences gameplay wise..but it would also cut out the constant racial bitching between America and the UK. And its not like Microsoft arent charging us over $15 extra in the uk for the experience.
As far as we know, there's no reason a developer couldn't implement a feature like this in matchmaking. After all, certain games (namely Army of Two) restrict online play between certain regions, so we don't see any reason that they couldn't put that in the users control. We're guessing it all really depends on whether or not a particular developer would want to implement such a feature. Anyone out there know of any games that already include such a feature?
Hello, I have a question for your next Ask X3F.
Microsoft is planning on taking some XBLA titles off of it's marketplace, titles that aren't selling well and have low metacritic scores. Anyway...
A) Is there a list yet available of what titles that will be taken down?
B) If I own one of those titles, will I still be able to re-download the game?
Thanks!
-Rob
RenaissanceMan2
A) There is no official list of which titles will be delisted, no. We did cover a list of potential titles earlier this week though. The list takes into account all the games on XBLA that are over six months old and have an average of less than 65% on Metacritic, which are two of the criteria for delisting. The third criterion, a conversion rate of less than 6%, is unknown to everyone except Microsoft and XBLA developers, so even this list could be wrong. Still, right now it's the best we have. You can check it out here.
B) The good news is that you will always be able to redownload any of the titles you downloaded before. This was confirmed by Gamerscore Blog earlier this week. Should you delete a game that has been or eventually becomes delisted, you can still grab it from your download history. Furthermore, delisted games will still retain all the features they had when you bought them. In other words, online play, leaderboards, and the like will all still work fine. Still, in theory, delisted games should be pretty awful. Thus, in theory, anyone who redownloads one should have horrible taste.
What happened to "Chronicles of Riddick: Assault on Dark Athena"? I haven't seen or heard anything on this in a long time.
Also, can you please check with Bungie.net about the "Graduate" achievement glitch that some of us were unfortunate to not get? I have the graduate pin but never got the achievement. I've contacted Bungie to no avail...please help.
We couldn't tell you exactly what happened to Assault on Dark Athena. We can guess, though. While it was originally announced as a 2007 title, all signs currently point to it still being in development. The official website is still functional, allowing gamers to sign up for updates (though all this does is sign you up for a generic Sierra newsletter). The most likely explanation is that Starbreeze has put Assault on Dark Athena on hold while it works on Project RedLime for Electronic Arts. All we know about Project RedLime is that it is a new version of one of EA's "most acclaimed classic franchises."
No offense to Riddick, but we'd say that a major project for EA is probably more attractive. We wouldn't expect the Assault on Dark Athena to hit before Project RedLime (or possibly even The Darkness 2).
As for your second question, we've heard of the problem before. Unfortunately, we have no idea how to fix the problem. Also, contrary to popular belief, we don't have a direct line to Bungie HQ. There is no emergency red phone in our office (oh, how we wish there were). If anyone here has had the same problem, please feel free to recount it in the comments (whether it was solved or not). We'll see if we can't do some digging on the subject. Given how long it's been since Halo 3 launched with no apparent fix, we're guessing you might be out of luck (assuming you don't want to start a new account anyway).
That's it for this week, folks. Keep sending your questions to: ask [at] xbox360fanboy [dawt] com.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
5-27-2008 @ 7:05PM
ZEBRA NINER said...
"Riddick-ulous! Get it? I'm having fun with words! What do you mean it's stupid? I'm in charge here, I do what I want!" -Richard (5 minutes ago). Just kidding. :)
The idea for restricting who you play with is brilliant! I think that should be something that's implemented in every game.
Reply
5-27-2008 @ 7:06PM
WillieBeamish said...
Funny how you stole this from the Gamespot thread I created yesterday and you didn't have the decency to mention my name or where you got the idea from. :(
Reply
5-28-2008 @ 5:27AM
Xav de Matos said...
What is it that you're referring to?
5-28-2008 @ 6:42PM
WillieBeamish said...
I was referring to wondering where the new Riddick game was... they took it almost verbatim from my gamespot thread! No biggie, just surprised they stuck it in askX360f.
5-27-2008 @ 7:27PM
xTjCx Deagle said...
willie that was a little straight forward maybe you should think before you say stupid @%*# like that
Reply
5-27-2008 @ 7:53PM
global! said...
i feel really stupid for asking this, but how do i ask questions for AskX3F?
Reply
5-27-2008 @ 7:57PM
NukeAssault said...
"Got a question for Ask X3F? Maybe you have a story or some information you'd like to share? Send it all to ask [at] xbox360fanboy [dawt] com."
Its in the post... >_<
But yeah... im still waiting for Riddick. Loved the original. =D
5-27-2008 @ 7:58PM
ZEBRA NINER said...
send your questions to: ask [at] xbox360fanboy [dawt] com. It's at the bottom of the post.
5-27-2008 @ 7:58PM
global! said...
nevermind. don't even dignify that with an answer, i see it up top.
Reply
5-27-2008 @ 8:02PM
SToNeP2277 said...
Is it going to be Backward Compatible or what they have other cheap games and they dont even have Riddick yet damn.
Reply
5-28-2008 @ 5:28AM
Xav de Matos said...
Considering the remake I wouldn't expect it on a future update, even thought they've stated they're pretty much done unless something comes up that they want to add.
Like Beyond Good & Evil. Which isn't on it.
5-27-2008 @ 8:08PM
freejon said...
Its amazing what an email to the developer will do prior to making guesses about the statis of a game. I emailed Starbreeze a couple of weeks ago about Riddick and they emailed me back to let me know it was still very much in development. They went on to say that they were balacing multiplayer. I did not get the impression that the game had taken a back seat to anything.
Reply
5-27-2008 @ 9:34PM
Rob A said...
Wow, I finally got one answered, the one about re-downloading de-listed games. Holy crap my grammar was shot. That's what you get working night shift I guess.
I asked that one on sunday, before the metacritic list or download history came up.
Reply
5-27-2008 @ 9:43PM
Arsonism said...
I have a theroy for the 6% conversion. It's probably the percentage of people who download the demo and then decide to purchase the full game. That's just my guess.
Reply
5-27-2008 @ 9:44PM
mike said...
ask x3f is kinda pointless because their answers are only helping the dumb people who cant type a few words into google to get their answers. They dont (perhaps cant) answer any of the real questions that google wont answer for you, like what happened to the incredible machine coming to XBLA?
And actually, freejon answered the "what happened to the riddick game" better then x3f right here in the comments lol. Its like x3f just does the googling and posts what it finds, rather then using its weight as a respectiable video game blog to question/contact the developers and find out the facts.
Reply
5-28-2008 @ 9:40AM
Richard Mitchell said...
That's a fair point. I would like to say that we don't necessarily have as much weight as you might think. It's not like saying "Hey, we're X3F" will make anyone return emails.
Having said that, part of the problem lies in that I usually put Ask together in one day, making turnaround time for emails a problem. I'll try to branch out a bit more on that.
Having said *that*, I've always referred to Ask as a 'community-powered' feature. It's actually a really good thing that our readers can answer questions that we can't / don't understand. Usually this refers to more technical questions (hackers we aren't), but sometimes it can even be good news like freejon's news on Riddick.
Still, I'll try to ferret out more answers in the future. (I did check with Microsoft about the region-restricted matchmaking idea, by the way. There is no Microsoft policy that says it can't be done).
5-28-2008 @ 10:16AM
JDH said...
When is Talisman going to be ready for XBLA? Do you have any details on the game?
Any more news about R.B.I. Baseball's rosters or online play would be fantastic.
When is IPTV going to be available?
Is there a resort or bed and breakfast that I can go to on vacationfor a week that would cater to my every whim while I sit in a big comfy chair in front of a 60" HDTV playing all of the 360 games I don't have time to play on a normal basis? I would pay for it. Would you?
Reply
5-28-2008 @ 10:43AM
Eddy said...
It would be great if they also remade, or even included in the new Riddick game, the original Riddick game. It is not backwards compatible and a lot of people never owned the original xbox.
Reply
5-28-2008 @ 11:28AM
Richard Mitchell said...
From what I understand, Assault on Dark Athena is just the same game with better graphics, AI, and some additional levels along with a multiplayer component.
5-29-2008 @ 7:04PM
Voltron said...
If they did take it then i demand to see a link to this supposed thread.
Reply