a $399 price tag should be nice

hmm the latest; the black colour version would be a limited version with HDMI + 120gb. Once the black colour version is sold out, the white colour version will be upgraded to the same specs. one thing for sure. the Add On will still be optional

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Added on March 25, 2007, 1:44 pmPrice = <>$470

This post has been edited by g5sim: Mar 25 2007, 01:44 PM

oh icing on the cake for eliters IPTV out of the box for the ELite console. FREE HDMI cable (PS3 oso tarak bagi)

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Added on March 26, 2007, 6:40 amoh lagik rumour - MS official announcement on 29th May

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Added on March 26, 2007, 6:41 am+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

The San Jose Mercury News' Dean Takahashi has a bit more details on the rumored Xbox 360 Elite edition that Game Informer reported on earlier this month.

Game Informer had already reported that the new, black 360 would come with a 120-gig hard drive and HDMI out and sell for $479.

Takahashi adds that the new 360 will habe IPTV capabilities, something I suggested would make sense, and that the new design will also implement the a chip redesign, shifting from 90 nanometer to 65 nanometer, resulting in a significant drop in cost to Microsoft.

Takahashi adds that he thinks the introduction of the new 360, which will be produced in limited quantities, will not effect the price of the current core or 20-gig models.

I suspect that this new model will hit in April, with official word coming as early as next week. I also wouldn't be surprised that if consumer interest shifted to the newer model, that Microsoft drops the price on their current models by this holiday season. Brian Crecente

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Added on March 26, 2007, 6:42 am++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Microsoft To Announce The Xbox 360 Elite
By Dean Takahashi
Saturday, March 24th, 2007 at 2:15 pm in Dean Takahashi, Gaming, General.

Rumors have floated in the past month that Microsoft will launch a new high-end version of the Xbox 360. It's true that Microsoft is preparing to announce the Xbox 360 Elite, a version of the game console with black plastic and advanced features. Several sources confirmed Microsoft plans to add this box to its product line.

The new box will go on sale in limited quantities soon for $479. The details may not be precise here, but I believe it will have an HDMI connector so that you can connect at the highest speed to a high-definition TV. It will come with a 120-gigabyte hard disk drive and will have IPTV capability.

Bill Gates announced in January that the Xbox 360 was capable of serving as a set-top box for IPTV, or Internet Protocol TV, which phone companies such as AT&T are using to offer high-definition movies and scores of channels in competition with TV.

The Xbox 360 Elite will apparently not come with a built-in HD-DVD drive, which will remain an option for playing high-definition movie disks. In the spring, the new machine will be available in limited quantities and it will reflect a redesigned motherboard. Tina Conley, an outside spokeswoman for Microsoft, declined to comment on Saturday. How solid is this information? Some details may be wrong. I'm not looking at any press release right now that describes it all. The details will be announced soon enough.

I've been waiting for Microsoft to make a move like this. The company has scheduled a motherboard redesign and cost reduction for every year, but this is the first major change to take the costs out of the inside of the Xbox 360. By the fall, the company will also implement a chip redesign, shifting from 90-nanometer production to 65 nanometer production. That will bring costs down fairly dramatically and will enable Microsoft to make the box in larger quantities by the fourth quarter.

Every other year, the company plans to shrink the size of its chips. It is overdue for a shift from the 90-nanometer chips that it started with in 2005 to the 65-nanometer chips commonly in production elsewhere. That transition isn't yet complete but it should be by the fall.

Why is it important to miniaturize a chip? When you make the width between circuits in a chip (the difference between 90 and 65), the technology gets better. The electrons travel shorter distances, the circuits are more reliable, defects can go down, yields go up, and you can fit the same chip design in a much smaller area. Since chip costs directly relate to how much material you use, a smaller chip is cheaper to make.

Every console maker will have the opportunity to reduce the costs of its chips. But how the console makers capitalize on that decision depends on strategy. Michael Pachter, an analyst at Wedbush Morgan, said in an email that he believes Microsoft will launch its elite box, but he isn't sure how it will position the other boxes, especially the Core unit. I expect the Xbox 360 with the 20-gigabyte hard disk drive will continue to sell for $399 and the Core unit, which has no hard drive, will sell for $299.

At $479, the Xbox 360 Elite will still be cheaper than Sony's $499 20-gigabyte PlayStation 3 and the $599 60-gigabyte PS 3. But it will match the Sony box with the HDMI connector feature. The Sony box is not yet capable of IPTV.

It is interesting that Microsoft hasn't added the HD-DVD drive as a permanent feature. The format war with Blu-ray is still going on, and that drive would add considerable cost. Microsoft sells it separately for $199.

The larger hard drive on the Xbox 360 Elite will make it much more useful for downloading movies and serving as a digital video recorder, which is one of the primary uses of an IPTV set-top box. High-definition movies can take up five gigabytes or more, while standard movies take about a gigabyte of storage space. Hence, 120 gigabytes is enough for, accounting for 10 gigabytes used by the system for other things, about 22 HD movies.

In any case, this is going to put some pressure on Sony and it will enable Microsoft to patch some holes in the technological capability of the Xbox 360. It will enable Microsoft to please the relatively small group of hardcore gamers who care about having the highest-end technology in the living room. It's those gamers who are most tempted by the PS 3. HDMI, for instance, will enable someone to view games and movies the way they were meant to be seen in either 720p or 1080p resolutions.


This post has been edited by g5sim: Mar 26 2007, 06:42 AM

Hmm check the date on the pics, the Elite console has been in production since before mid February.

HDMI and 120GB hard disk confirmed



++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Here we go again! It's only been a few days since we last wrote about the black Xbox 360, and despite all the commotion here in Europe after the launch of the PlayStation 3 this weekend (we'll get there, too, in just a bit), our attention has been caught yet again by the stories surrounding Microsoft's darkened console. There's still no official press release detailing the now-certain black Xbox 360 - or Xbox 360 Elite, as it's called - if that's what you were hoping for. But we did come across some photographs taken at the production line in China, showing that it's as real as possible. And (almost) ready for shipping.

The photos were apparently taken last month, but only now some Chinese dude gathered the courage to post them on the TGFCer forums (one of China's top bulletin boards), along with the following message, as auto-translated by Google:

"As mobile phones, cameras can not be brought into plants. The key to reaching the buttocks no plans, joy!"

As horrified as we may be at the thought of someone hiding his mobile phone where the sun don't shine, and then smuggle it inside the manufacturing plant to take those pictures, we can only be grateful for finally having some solid piece of evidence supporting the recent rumours about the Xbox 360 Elite. One of the shots also confirms the 120 GB hard drive, and as for the HDMI output, that confirmation (sort of) comes straight from a Microsoft dev, via Xbox-Scene:

Q: Will the HDMI output on the revised 360 require any code changes?
A: No changes required.

A couple of days ago, it was also stated on Mercury News that the Xbox 360 Elite will indeed have IPTV (Internet Protocol TV) capability, but no built-in or bundled HD-DVD drive. By common consensus, the black model will cost $479, and will start shipping this April, in limited quantities (reportedly a couple hunded thousands). So, what more details do you still need?

The Xbox 360 Elite drum beat grows louder


Xbox 360 Elite systems have been caught in the wild on a Chinese production line. Xbox 360 Fanboy has images of racks of black Xbox 360 units taken from a Chinese video game forum.

The images not only show the sleek, black exterior of the Xbox 360 Elite, but a close-up image shows the 120GB hard disk drive (HDD) fitted atop the console.

Further confirmation of the Xbox 360 Elite came over the weekend from Dean Takahashi of the The Mercury News. Takahashi was the first to break the news of the Xbox 360's upcoming IPTV service.

Likewise, promotional materials from Gamestop have been spotted which detail the 120GB which will be made available as a stand-alone upgrade for current Xbox 360 owners.

While the new black exterior and 120GB HDD may be headliner features of the $479 USD Xbox 360 Elite, the addition of an HDMI port and an HDMI cable are also added bonuses. Two features that are reportedly missing from the Xbox 360 Elite, however, are built-in WiFi and an internal HD DVD drive.

Engadget notes that the Xbox 360 Elite will be available in limited quantities sometime this Spring and that Xbox 360 Premium systems will get Elite-spec hardware (sans black finish) sometime in late Summer/early Fall. The price is expected to remain at $399 while price cuts are expected to help clear out the existing stock of Xbox 360 Premiums with the smaller 20GB HDD.






This post has been edited by g5sim: Mar 27 2007, 10:22 AM