New Black Xbox 360 Announced

There has been widespread speculation for months since blurry spy shots of a “modified” Xbox 360 with HDMI output were found on the internet that Microsoft was planning to release a new version of the Xbox 360. The idea was probably, at the time, that they would have to mix it up a bit in order to keep pace with the Nintendo Wii and the Sony Playstation 3. While the Nintendo Wii is still flying off the shelves at such a ridiculous rate that Nintendo is having a tough time producing enough to meet demand, PS3’s sales numbers have slumped considerably. Although they were hot during the past holiday season, you can walk into just about any store now and see multiple PS3s just sitting on the shelves, collecting dust. What most folks don’t know that the real winner of the console wars during the 2006 holiday season was, in fact, the Xbox 360 as many consumers found that it was difficult to find a Wii or a PS3 at the time and settled with a 360 instead.

One could say that the Wii has found a nice little niche to fill with it’s low price and something-to-please-everyone games and that the real competition is between the 360 and the PS3 since, at a low $279.99, you could definitely purchase a Wii regardless of how many systems you purchase. Looking at it now, you can definitely see flaws in Sony’s business plan. Including a Blu-Ray player, most obviously, has increased prices dramatically to a staggering $599 US for a 60GB model. I’m sure built-in Wi-Fi and the fancy pants controllers also contribute to the high price. Amazingly, it still costs Sony more than the sticker price to actually produce each unit.

I’m sure Microsoft has seen how, at least initially, Sony’s plan has been somewhat of a failure and has gone with a much more reasonable plan. Not everyone wants a Blu-Ray player and in the same thinking, the new 360 will not include a built-in HD-DVD drive, which is still an available optional extra. Therefore, the price will probably be a more reasonable $479, or around $80 more than the cost of the Premium package. This seems to be about right since the difference will be that the new Elite 360 will have an HDMI interface as well as a larger 120GB hard drive, 100GB more than the standard 20GB model included on current Premium 360s.

The new Elite 360 models will also run cooler (and then hopfully, quieter) than the current 360. If you own a 360 now, you’ll notice how ungodly noisy the damn thing is. Engadget reports that although we’re not sure if the new 360s will have 65nm chips, they will probably be included in the future if not on the initial run, which could result in a further price drop.

Personally, I’m going to grab one of these from work as soon as I can…after returning my current one, of course.

Oh right, and it’s in a new, sexy black paint job.

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