Anon reminisces good old days of cheap consoles

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matt6342@reddit

I’m pretty sure this was actually considered cheap, it was the arcade version so had no hard drive, no WiFi and the controller ran off batteries

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dinodisorderly@reddit

What else would the controller run off?

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matt6342@reddit

I meant it used AA batteries instead of a rechargeable one

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Bauld_Man@reddit

That's a marked improvement though.

You know what happens when my PS5 controller dies? I have to plug it in and wait for it to recharge. When my Xbox controller dies? I just swap out the batteries.

(And before you say "unless you don't have any more batteries", I just bought 4 Eneloop AA batteries and I've never had a problem)

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It's wild that you're being down voted. The ability for a controller to use AA batteries is absolutely a good thing. Like you said if it dies you can swap them out right away, and you can still go buy rechargeable batteries or a rechargeable battery pack. No need to tether to the console to charge it while you're playing if it does which wouldn't even be an option for me with standard charging cables as my couch is about 6.5ft from my tv.

If one of those rechargeable battery packs quits working you get a new one and not have to open up the controller to replace it like you would a PS controller or X Elite controller to replace a faulty battery.

The benefits far outweighs the negative that is a 1 time investment in rechargeable batteries/battery packs.

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TacktiCal_@reddit

You know what happens when my PS5 controller dies? I have to plug it in and wait for it to recharge.

I'm about to blow your mind. You can continue using the PS5 controller while it's charging!

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Bauld_Man@reddit

So do you just have a 16 foot USB C cable and use it in wired mode for hours?

Swapping out the batteries takes less than 30 seconds, I don't see how that's possibly more convenient.

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MyDogIsDaBest@reddit

So you bought rechargeable batteries to solve the problem of disposable batteries, while all other consoles just have built in rechargeable batteries?

I do understand the argument that you can keep going with rechargeable AA batteries, but it's just more nuisance imo, I'd rather a cable to plug the controller in and charge it for a bit

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wpm@reddit

Or you can take two batteries out of the charger and swap em out and not be tethered while you charge.

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Bauld_Man@reddit

It's exactly like having a removable phone battery. It is nice to be able to just swap a battery out instead of needing to wait or grab an entire second controller to keep playing.

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Arcane_Xanth@reddit

Yep. Batteries one can swap with other batteries, rechargable or not, will always be superior to an inaccessible battery pack.

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Xalyia-@reddit

Rechargeable Xbox 360 controllers had swappable rechargeable battery packs. They didn’t start making them internal until later on. You could actually buy an “upgrade kit” for the AA battery versions, since it used the same housing.

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matt6342@reddit

Yes I bought the upgrade kit for mine, as well as the WiFi card which plugged in the back

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Bauld_Man@reddit

Oh that's interesting, I never had a 360 (I use an Xbox One controller) so I just assumed they were still the same.

Out of curiosity, did the rechargeable battery packs last as long as AAs? My PS5 controller will die in 8-10 hours but my 360 with the Eneloops last days.

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Xalyia-@reddit

I feel like they lasted longer than AA batteries, but my memory is hazy since this was nearly 20 years ago for me. Could be confirmation bias too from using old partially used AA batteries from other devices.

Keep in mind the PS5 controller has more sensors and feedback mechanisms (touchpad, haptic triggers, gyro motion) than an Xbox One controller, so I would expect it to die sooner regardless of battery type.

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StalkMeNowCrazyLady@reddit

Every official X360 controller ran off AA batteries if it wasn't a wired only controller. You could buy rechargeable battery packs but it didn't come with them.

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BemusedBengal@reddit

My controllers used to come with long copper cylinders covered in rubber that ran between the controller and the console. Electrons would travel from the console over one of those cylinders, through the controller, and back to the console over other cylinders. Depending on which buttons were pressed at that moment, different amounts of electrons would travel over particular cylinders.

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Celt-at-Arms@reddit

Mine came with a small hamster in a wheel

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saketho@reddit

Yeah this was also the starting price of an iPod touch? iirc. And an xbox for that price was considered pretty damn good.

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heavyPacket@reddit

Wasn’t just consoles were cheaper, the games felt more human and like the developers actually cared about making the best game they could because they wanted to. And yes, rose tinted glasses and all that, but I don’t always wear them.

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underwear_dickholes@reddit

Lol there was a ton of garbage released then too. Only difference now is that people pay for cosmetics and to win.

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Alive_Ice7937@reddit

rose tinted glasses and all that, but I don’t always wear them.

Obligatory

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Pluckytoon@reddit

Yeah then gaming became way bigger as an industry as a result, lots of companies became public and live service happened. All down hill from there, but tbf this is survivorship bias as slop games were already a thing back then, and studios are still releasing masterpieces nowadays. It‘s just that game dev became more time hungry and instead of 20 musthave per year we only get 10 or so

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mattmcguire08@reddit

Thats objectively true but you because we only remember the good games and forgot the bad ones. While today you see all kinds of them

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GeneralEi@reddit

Can confirm from having played at the time and still enjoy trawling the bargain buckets when i see them, there was a LOT of shovelware back then.

No one fondly remembers all the god awful movie tie in games

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ponzidreamer@reddit

Deadspace 3 wanted us to pay for advantages in a single player game with micro transactions.

EA being EA

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Bob_A_Feets@reddit

Or all the matrix clones, max payne clones, GTA clones, Mario clones, etc etc.

So much garbage, only difference is there at least were not AI slop so somebody got paid to make them.

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GeneralEi@reddit

Show me when AI can make unique and thoughtful mechanics or moments in general through the rivers of slop and I MIGHT look twice at it

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Askefyr@reddit

The PS2/Wii era was absolutely the golden days for shovelware. Truly astounding amounts of trash was made for those platforms.

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kolima_@reddit

even for PC, however I still remeber those random games, one above all Sacred 2, which I think was some sort of D2 clone, but was my fix when I couldn’t afford WoW sub

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tukatu0@reddit

You could kind of tell which ones were those though.

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Askefyr@reddit

You still largely can. If anything, you've got way more and way better options to do that now.

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saketho@reddit

Also an influential factor: age and money. I was a kid back then, and the annual game I got was the one game of the year. Today I buy far too much junk. Perhaps if i had money back then I’d have played a lot more of the bad games.

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bobzsmith@reddit

There were so many slop shovel ware movie tie in games that you forgot.

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Askefyr@reddit

They weren't cheaper though. £160 in 2008 (three years after the 360 launched) is £265 today when considering inflation. That's almost exactly the price of an entry level Xbox Series S today, which is around £250-299 depending on the retailer.

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MetaCommando@reddit

The Arcade model couldn't run OG Xbox games without a $80 attachment

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Ok-Lynx3444@reddit

Because it was before everyone was chasing the live service unicorn hoping to be the next fortnite or gta online and single players weren’t just copy pasted open world movie games that take up 80gb of storage

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Fleedjitsu@reddit

Well that's the thing, a lot of these developer studios have been bought up by corporations, or have grown into larger businesses themselves. Both paths lead to the decision making being down by businessmen who rise to the top of the company.

Those decision makers have a passion for making money, not making good games. Games are just the vessel they happen to have access to to allow them to make money. If "Xbox" cheesecake sold better than games or consoles they they'd swap in a heartbeat.

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InfiniteRespect@reddit

Rose tinted glasses would apply if you couldn't go play those era games. But you can and they are still awesome

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PurpleWoodpecker2830@reddit

Look at cod zombies. It went from a dev team working on it in their spare time, which ended up in the game. Now it’s warzone campaign zombies

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saketho@reddit

This is true with every change in gaming lol. Consider: The original DOS Prince of Persia games had actual good game development and the 3D games have been far worse.

Black ops 7 Zombies today is too modern, Black ops 3 was the last good era. But back in 2015 we were saying Black ops 3 is too modern, black ops 1 and world at war were the “real” zombies mode.

you can make the case about any and all eras of gaming.

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Cpt_Soban@reddit

Xbox360

Boomers

Huh, I'm 38, owned a 360 in 2009, so I'm a boomer now?

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Absolutemehguy@reddit

"Boomer" is just slang for 30+ people now.

Yeah pretty regarded but what ya gonna do?

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Cpt_Soban@reddit

Embrace it to piss off the zoomers

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ExoTheFlyingFish@reddit

Just under $270 USD today according to an inflation calculator I used.

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AlphaMassDeBeta@reddit

This was also when a dollar was 50p.

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MetallGecko@reddit

And you could buy a game and the game was actually on the disc complete without any day one patches and it fucking worked.

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funeral__pyr@reddit

Like fallout new Vegas

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FMC_Speed@reddit

FNV was the second game I’ve ever preordered and I remember I had a WiFi login problem that prevented me from connecting my Xbox to the internet for a month or two, I played and finished the game and honestly don’t remember all the problems people said they were having maybe they were on the PS3 but on my 360 the game ran mostly fine for months without a single update

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InfiniteRespect@reddit

Ps3 version wasn't that bad either, I also beat it without any patches.

But if you went to the strip after playing for 40 minutes, no joke the game would run at like maybe 8-16fps

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FMC_Speed@reddit

I don’t remember slowdowns at all, most bugs I got were animation bugs and especially stuck on geometry but they were infrequent and coming from F3 it didn’t really seem out of place

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PsycommuSystem@reddit

Played the PS3 version on release and it crashed multiple times a session.

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CyclicalFlow@reddit

Average PS3 experience lol. Games were good but they didn't care at all about whether or not the consoles could run then.

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Scottish_Whiskey@reddit

I got to lake mead and my game would freeze within 2-3 minutes of loading that save. It’d have to actually turn off the console to restart it lmao

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tukatu0@reddit

ran fine on my machine

Classic too

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Bob_A_Feets@reddit

“And it worked”

“Fallout new Vegas”

Pick one lol.

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Ok_Independence_2630@reddit

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Previous_Air_9030@reddit

Glorious.

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CaseroRubical@reddit

Thats the joke

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funeral__pyr@reddit

You’re the only one who caught on

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StrengthfromDeath@reddit

Day 1 patches were beginning to become standard at this time. Probably not until 2009 did they start to be expected with every game, but i remember a fair few that had day 1s. Including single player games.

Also of note, games shipping with a really bad bug that gets patched within the first 2 weeks, but not day 1, was fairly regular.

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IudexJudy@reddit

Yeah well games are too big for discs, most “day one patches” you’re talking about are installing the data. That’s just the price of fidelity and expansiveness

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fluffynuckels@reddit

360 def had day one patches for games

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wolflordval@reddit

The 60 price point was actually set at this console. They were cheaper before and people bitched about paying 60 for a game back when the Xbox 360 came out.

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xxNemasisxx@reddit

GTA V was £30 in Sainsbury's at launch in the UK

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wpm@reddit

June 1 2006 the rate was actually 73 pence to a dollar. The advert in equivalent dollars would've been around $220 in 2006, which is worth $360 today.

It's like poetry, it rhymes

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DarKliZerPT@reddit

£159.99 in 2008 equals £265.77 in 2026, which is €306.86 or $359.65.

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Jorvikson@reddit

You're not accounting for change in exchange rate.

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EEEGuba69@reddit

Holy shit infinite money glitch :o

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BBlizz3@reddit

Yeh well boomers are predominantly wagecucks whos dicks get hard for 'climbing the corpo ladder', which later generations realised was straight fugasi .. so any purchase that didnt assist with their closed off mindset of productivity was a complete waste

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Jsaun906@reddit

Thats ~$460 in todays US dollars

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ThirdXavier@reddit

This was the budget version of the console that had no hard drive lol. Idk why people lie like this. PS3 came out at $600 which is nearly $1000 in today's money, and I remember the PS3s and Xbox Elites (model most people got) near the end of their life retailing for like $400.

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Judah_Earl@reddit

The peak of gaming.

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GodofSad@reddit

I remember my 360 came with 3 games. Fortzs, skyrim, and one other i don't remember.

I could afford it on my paperboy wage. A simpler time.

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staybehind23@reddit

I agree gaming was better back in the days but the price-aspect is bullshit. You could buy one game for 69, it sucked and now you were stuck with it for months until your next allowances. No Game Pass, Humble Bundle or Steam sales. GameStop Trade-in was bordering on being a scam.

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Wacky_X@reddit

That’s why redbox and video game rentals were way more popular

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Cynical_Tripster@reddit

Even then, if a rental was 5 bucks, and you got 1 a week, that's still 20 dollars/month, while I pay like 10/month if I get the yearly premium pass and gives me the PS+ catalog

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lron_tarkus@reddit

No it was different because mommy was paying for it.

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buffinator2@reddit

We really used to be able to rent a game, stop by Pizza Hut on the way home (before Pizza Hut was ass), put the game into the console, and be playing while the pizza was still hot.

We squandered it.

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tukatu0@reddit

69? Is this a joke? 15% taxes in usd where? If you lived in such an area. 100 dollars in leisure was probably cheap.

Game pass isn't even some kind of deal. Even the decreased price of $23 is $275 a year. Indie games aren't $100. If you wait for sales you can buy like 9 for the same cost at $30. You pay extra for the now factor.

Steam sales today are also the same sales on console. They just happen at a different time. The publishers making discounts are the same ones across plataforms.

I don't think your comment is real enough. Maybe 2006-7 only.

Ironically cartidges mostly broke because of spitting into them when blowing air trying to clean them.

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TopMarionberry1149@reddit

Yeah I have no idea what that guy is talking about. 60$ games are expensive but the used market for physical games still existed.

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tukatu0@reddit

Plus sales. Even n64 games which cost 100 in todays would get 50% of and so onf. I guess that was thanks to the used market too

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Askefyr@reddit

By the time this is from (2008-2009) the RROD issues were largely solved. It had to do with the first few years of 360 production using very early generations of lead-free solder, which was shockingly shit.

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KuntStink@reddit

I remember buying a halo 3 edition from Walmart for 650cad or something back in 2007. Didn't feel cheap

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Greatgg@reddit

Very interesting. Now compare it with the average or median salary

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Drummk@reddit

It's weird how things have come around. Back in the early 90s you could pay £60 for a Megadrive game, which was a lot of money back then, for a game that might well be terrible. Then games got very cheap, and now getting more expensive again.

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wompod@reddit

Boomers? 360???

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Coakis@reddit

Anon doesn't know what inflation is.

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AnalTyrant@reddit

Keep in mind part of the problem we had with the cost of that console was that people were buying two or three of those, due to the red ring of death problem that lasted for way too long.

If it had been a one-time purchase for a working console, sure maybe it would have been acceptable, but having to pay that multiple times over just to keep a working console was a tougher proposition.

Personally I just didn't buy one, didn't seem worth spending my money to coin flip whether or not it would brick in six months.

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Shit up

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