There is apparently no way to open a chest/person/stash and selectively choose what to take when using a controller? Even though the tutorial panel for searching things indicates you can (even going so far as to display the buttons on the 360 controller).

The tutorial panel says to press 'X' to open the the chest (or whatever) and then select the items you want and press 'A', but pressing X makes you automatically take everything.

This is a BROKEN mechanic, particularly when they insist on having a weight mechanic in the game. Any indication this is going to be fixed, or should I just imagine this won't be fixed until they're forced to address it in order to make the Xbox360 version not be broken?

Yes the tutorial is misleading. It is much smaller problem than you make it out to be though, especially with chests added in latest patch.

So is there a chest at the beginning of Chapter 1?

It's very annoying getting out of the Prologue and right when I start Chapter 1 being unable to run because I'm carrying too much weight with no way of offloading any of it other than dropping it all.

Yes, in the Inn. I think you can't stash anything by talking to the owner, but using the chest itself works fine.

The beginning is a bit pain in the ass. You have to walk to flotsam, or you can put some stuff on the ground and get back for it later, but in that case you cannot load the game, because stuff dissapears from the ground upon loading.

Could always use the zero weight mod. : )

But why carrying lots of unnecessary crap around? Just save Adrain La Vallette in the prologue to get the strong back perk and sell anything but the best armor, weapons and stuff with no or very low weight (and get rid of those 100 pieces of iron ore). Geralt as a character isn't anal retentive about posessions.