It’s been a while since I’ve updated my blog.  I really should get around to daily posts or something, not that I really have much of a reader base…

Anyway, I have officially broken down and bought a Kinect, mostly because I made a small gamble with myself.  Basically, I was shopping on Black Friday for a simple transfer cable to so I can get my data over to my new 250 gb harddrive for my xbox (gifted to me).  While at Best Buy, one of the clerks said that Kinects should have been in stock at one of the other local stores.  So, I was like “well, it’s normally out of stock.  So, if it is actually there, I will consider it fate and buy it.”  In all honesty, I expected it to be out of stock, but there were indeed multiple Kinects at that store.  So, I went ahead and splurged.  At that time, I only bought Kinectimals, which I shall talk about in some other post.

However, I also bought Dance Central via Amazon, and that game just came in today.  So far, I feel like the game is the real deal.  It is exactly what I had hoped to find when I went into DDR several years ago.  At that time, I didn’t want to buy an expensive mat, so DDR was never fully fun for me.  To say the least, I had issues with the mat slipping out from under my feet and not registering my moves.  However, that is not the case with Dance Central.

With Dance Central, I am feeling a full body motion experience for starts, not just my legs.  Also, I know that my mess-ups on my scores are all me now, and not hardware mis-haps.  This makes me much more content with my scores than I ever was with DDR.  I also must admit that Dance Central has definitely gotten me sweating.  So far, I can’t do much more than 3-4 songs without taking a break.  However, I think I’m going to make it a program to do 20-30 minutes of this game a day to exercise.  It simply feels that effective.

Now, I do wish there was a larger song selection and that the songs came in more affordable packs.  So far, they are 240 points per song, which is a bit of a hit to my wallet.  Still, I broke down and bought one of the DLC songs because it is so nostalgic (Whoop! There it is).

Anyway, Kinect definitely feels like fun tech that produces more exercise experiences than the Wii.  So, in that way, Microsoft succeeded.

Dance Central – Xbox.com.

I find this to be a very acceptable thing indeed.  I really hope that this means I can buy a simple USB external harddrive and extend the memory capabilities of my 360.  To be honest, I have been afraid to use my 360 for much in regards to installations, downloads, and whatnot because 20 GB just simply is not a lot of space.  Well, I also don’t want to blow a fortune on items that can be revoked with the press of a button, but that’s besides the point.

I’ve had several games that I’ve been tempted to install onto my hardrive to improve performance.  I’ve also wanted back-ups of my downloads.  This here looks like it will do the trick.

Now, to back away from my excited ramble for a moment, I shall quickly explain what it is that I am excited about.  You see, for years, the X-box 360 has had only two choices for memory.  First, you had your memory card, which was simply not really a viable option.  It is only a 512 MB card that was propriety hardware.  Simply expensive and impractical.  Next, you had the internal harddrives.  Now, any smart person bought a 360 with a harddrive.  Well, I bought mine in the first wave/era, so I was stuck with a 20 GB in a generation where space became important real quick.  Microsoft did provice upgrade solutions for those like me; however, the price of those harddrive upgrades were simply highway robbery.  To put it simply, I upgraded my PS3 from a 60GB internal drive to a 500 GB internal drive at half the price of the upgrade price for the 120GB 360 Harddrive that’s been on sale.

So, for microsoft to provide this solution is a breath of fresh air.  Now, just watch as they make it propriety hardware locked..

Update: Fully read the article, now.  I jumped to a happy point upon seeing this news, and even in the announcement, Microsoft has taken away my joy.  There is a 16 GB limit to the storage device capability, with another limit of only being able to use two storage devices.  So, Microsoft, you have toyed with the consumer yet again.  While this is still a good option for backing up files, this won’t be the great advent of wow that I was originally hoping it to be.

Source: Xbox 360 gaining USB storage support in 2010 update — Joystiq.