The Elite Xbox 360
April 9, 2007
By John

This is old news. Well, old by internet standards, but I want to talk about it anyways.

The latest version of the Xbox 360 has been announced, and a great deal of the internet went, "Meh." Basically, the new version of the 360 comes with an HDMI Port and cable, a 120 gigabyte hard drive, and it comes in black all for $479.99.

Now, granted, people have wanted all three of these features, but this isn't the way Microsoft should have gone. At this point in the generation of the system, Microsoft needs to offer a price drop on the system to get the user base larger, not offer a newer more expensive model. Currently, Nintendo's latest console (I refuse to say that stupid name publicly) is closing ground on the 360. Even though the PS3 is off to a slow start, its recent sales boost due to the European launch has really pushed its sales numbers out of the red. Microsoft needs to offer its Premium System at $349.99, or even less at $299.99, in order to keep the user base expanding to keep developer interest high in their system.

The way they should have gone is to simply bump the core unit out of existence, put the Premium 360 SKU at $299.99 and make the Elite SKU $399.99. "But John, how could they afford that," you ask? It's quite simple actually. They have been profiting on the 360 hardware for months now. If they drop the price down to levels I mentioned, then they could get more sales to increase the user base, which would get them more games sold, which would get them even more money.

Another big deal is that the early adopters really are screwed on this model. Not only does the new hard drive cost an extorting $179.99, but you cannot transfer all of your files on to it if you bought a second 20 gigabyte hard drive to store videos on like Microsoft told you to do prior to the new hard drive. When you also consider that now early adopters aren't ever going to get a HDMI cable for their early systems, this is really one gigantic PR disaster for Microsoft. And since I am one of the few people that could really take advantage of this new SKU (I have the HD DVD add on Drive, a 1080p LCD TV with no VGA input with 2 empty HDMI inputs, and a 20 gigabyte hard drive full of HD TV episodes) I am still not liking this news. That should really tell you something about this model.