From Rumor to Reality: Xbox 360 Elite

[Jeremy Charette]

<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://www.xbox.com/en-US/hardware/x/xbox360elitesystem/default.htm' target='_blank'>http://www.xbox.com/en-US/hardware/x/xbox360elitesystem/default.htm</a><br /><br /></div><i>"Introducing Xbox 360™ Elite, the premier Xbox 360 console package that includes a massive 120GB hard drive, a high-definition multimedia interface (HDMI) port, a high-definition cable, and a premium black finish. Xbox 360 Elite also includes a black wireless controller and black Xbox Live® headset."</i><br /><br /> <img src="http://www.digitalmediathoughts.com/images/console.jpg" /> <br /><br />Available April 29th for $479 USD. We finally get HDMI, and a bigger hard drive to store all that HD content on. The road to IPTV on the Xbox 360 has officially been paved.

[jeffd]

screw that, just give me the required hdmi slot, and the new cooler and quieter cpu. ^^

[Jason Dunn]

I'm not that impressed that they changed the colour - now none of my extra controllers or accessories will match. :lol:

I hope they'll release the 120 GB drive at retail for the old Xbox! They'd better...

[Damion Chaplin]

Do you download that much content that you need a larger drive? Or is it saved games? About how much stuff do you have to have on your HD before you need to start deleting stuff? I've only had my 360 for about 6 weeks, and I sure don't download a lot of content...

[Jason Dunn]

Do you download that much content that you need a larger drive? Or is it saved games?

Yeah, I download pretty much every HD movie trailer and usually end up watching them a few times before deleting them. Downloaded demo games also eat up a lot of space - 500 to 1000 MB each - so it doesn't take long.

[Darius Wey]

I hope they'll release the 120 GB drive at retail for the old Xbox! They'd better...

They will... at $179.99 USD a pop. Now compare that to the $80 USD price difference between the Premium and the Elite and you begin to wonder if the world turned upside down.

[Darius Wey]

Do you download that much content that you need a larger drive? Or is it saved games? About how much stuff do you have to have on your HD before you need to start deleting stuff? I've only had my 360 for about 6 weeks, and I sure don't download a lot of content...

Damion, have you tried the Video Marketplace? Its HD video content will suck your 20GB HDD dry. :P

[Felix Torres]

They will... at $179.99 USD a pop. Now compare that to the $80 USD price difference between the Premium and the Elite and you begin to wonder if the world turned upside down.

How so?
The way I see if, the 20GB drive is $100 and the 120GB drive is $179, difference=$80.

Or,
Core @$299 + 120GB HDD @$179=$479.

They're playing right along with the established price/value curve.
No change either way. You get a few extra goodies as you go up from Core to Premium (headset and wireless controller) and Premium to Elite (HDMI port and cables, black box) but there is no real bargain or ripoff job here.

As for the separate drive at $179, it comes with a data transfer cable and software to *clone* the 20Gb to the 120GB drive. (That's comparable to the Datel XPort that runs $30 or so by itself). Then you can sell the old drive on ebay for $50. :twisted:

For comparison a 120GB Maxtor external 2.5" drive at BB runs $139.
Again, no great bargain or ripoff.

Obviously, MS is not impressed by their competition and see no real need to change the value/price equations.
Much as I would like to see lower 360 prices, I can't say I blame them in view of this kind of PS3 marketing:
http://www.maxconsole.net/content_img/ps3casead.jpg
:twisted:
And, today, the AP got into the act, calling the PS3, "a $599.99 console that plays Blu-ray DVDs."
http://www.courant.com/business/hc-xbox0328.artmar28,0,129907.story?coll=hc-headlines-business

Oy vey! :roll:
Sony, you have a problem; too much Blu-Ray talk, not enough game talk.

[Darius Wey]

How so?
The way I see if, the 20GB drive is $100 and the 120GB drive is $179, difference=$80.

Okay, let's treat HDMI as dispensable. Now what advice do you give to existing owners of the Premium? Resort to the bank-breaking option of shelling out $180 flat for a new HDD, or the PITA option of selling their existing SKU in favour of the Elite (which may even save them a few dollars if they can sell it at a reasonably high price)?

I do think the HDD could have been priced better, so hard-core gamers (driven by their "must have the latest and greatest" mentality) feel like their existing SKU has value and that there's no real need to make the jump to the Elite.

[jeffd]

The HD for both xbox 1 and 2 were the largest rip off in the world. Buying an external drive from BB is the next best thing to just handing over your wallet. B&amp;M stores allway have a huge markup on external drives eve though the drive can be had for almost half, and an external closure is only about $20 (far less then that in actual materials).

frankly if your looking to watch your downloaded movies and tv shows or convert your xbox into a pvr (should they allow it to be done in the future) you will be paying far more for it using an xbox 360 then some other pc related solution.

[Tim Williamson]

Does the 360 allow you to connect an external USB drive?

Also, I find it amazing that the 360 has been out almost 1.5 years with no price change at all...that really shows the demand that it has. I'm hoping to pick up someone's premium package when they sell it for an Elite.

[stephman]

I'm hoping to pick up someone's premium package when they sell it for an Elite.

Oh yeah?...look me up on April 29th :wink:

[Darius Wey]

Does the 360 allow you to connect an external USB drive?

It certainly does.

[Felix Torres]

Okay, let's treat HDMI as dispensable. Now what advice do you give to existing owners of the Premium?

Lol!
What advise do I offer?
Do nothing.
You already *have* a hard drive.
Any TV shows you buy you can download at need.
Ditto for demos and trailers.

Unless you absolutely positively can't live on a 20GB drive, wait til the fall.
See how big a price cut is coming. The effective price of the Premium is $349, right now, and there is going to be a monster market in used 20GB drives that will fit in nicely with the new, lower price of the core. And the Elite itself.
Wait and let the market settle down.
That way, if you choose to sell the system, you're buying into the 65nm mobo. And you might discover that the market value of the old drive is low enough its better to keep the old drive as a system backup.

(Have you looked into the Datel Xport, BTW? It makes bigger drives pretty much redundant...)

As for the price of the core, one man's rip-off is the next person's bargain.
Before casting aspersions, I'd suggest listening to the Major Nelson podcast from this morning. They go into detail about the HDD pricing and highlight the fact that the *only* reason they got HD downloadable content is because they have an encypted file system and are running a walled garden operation.

You want downloadable movies and TV shows? And you want to keep them locally at all times even when you don't *have* to? Then, you buy the HDD from MS. Everything has a price and that's the price to play this particular game.
Ante up or walk away.

The 360 is its own creature; its not a PC. It doesn't work off PC economics so PC pricing comparisons don't hold water.
And its not a Mac, Apple TV, Wii, or PS3.
Its a new creature with its own set of rules.
We as consumers have a choice; follow the 360 rules or move on to something else. The best way to send messages to a company is with your wallet. Don't like what they offer? Don't buy it.

Easier for the blood pressure than getting all riled up. ;-)

[Felix Torres]

Anyway, a funny thing happened on the way to the forum... :wink:

Everybody is focusing on the big drive debate and ignoring the *real* news of the day:
http://www.joystiq.com/2007/03/28/xbox-live-video-offerings-expanded-to-fill-those-120gb-hard-driv/

MS is expanding their content suppliers for Video Marketplace.
Names of note:
- A&amp;E
- National Geographic (In HD, one hopes)
- ADV films

The latter in particular suggests MS knows their target audience too well; if they truly open up the ADV vaults I forsee hundreds if not thousands of college students going bankrupt. :twisted:
On-demand Anime on 360? Two clicks to bankruptcy... :wink:

Also, does anybody think MS electing the CEO of Netflix to the MS Board of directors is an accident?

http://biz.yahoo.com/bizj/070326/1437816.html?.v=1

[Jeremy Charette]

Netflix...over Xbox 360? Hangon, let's post that on the front page.

[Tim Williamson]

I think Felix may have the scoop of the year (or at least week) here. :)

[cdcooker]

I thought the new Elite will have an internal HD-DVD drive. So MS is wanting us to spend $479 now, and by Christmas they will release the XBox 360 Ultimate, with integrated HD-DVD for $599? Very likely.

[Felix Torres]

I thought the new Elite will have an internal HD-DVD drive. So MS is wanting us to spend $479 now, and by Christmas they will release the XBox 360 Ultimate, with integrated HD-DVD for $599? Very likely.

Very unlikely.
There is no HD-DVD drive (or BD-drive, for that matter) that can deliver the data transfer rate of a 12X DVD drive at any price, much less a price that would make it practical on a 360.
If you can't buy the parts, you can't build it.
The earliest they could do that (*if* they wanted to, which they don't) would be next year.
The only time you'll see an XBOX with a built-in HD-DVD drive is after Blu-Ray is dead and buried. If that should ever happen.
Since BD is not going away any time soon...

[Jeremy Charette]

I don't think that will happen. MS wants to continue to be seen as the less expensive option, and it makes more money selling peripherals like the wireless adapter and HD-DVD drive separately. They'll capture a bigger slice of the pie than Sony by keeping the entry cost lower than the PS3 ($300 vs. $500), while still satisfying the hardcore gamer with a more expensive and capable alternative (the Elite).

[cdcooker]

I don't know the technical issue here. But if PS3 incorporated BR, with no known issue regarding the data transfer rate on both new and old games, why Xbox with HD-DVD will have a problem here?

I thought the new Elite will have an internal HD-DVD drive. So MS is wanting us to spend $479 now, and by Christmas they will release the XBox 360 Ultimate, with integrated HD-DVD for $599? Very likely.

Very unlikely.
There is no HD-DVD drive (or BD-drive, for that matter) that can deliver the data transfer rate of a 12X DVD drive at any price, much less a price that would make it practical on a 360.
If you can't buy the parts, you can't build it.
The earliest they could do that (*if* they wanted to, which they don't) would be next year.
The only time you'll see an XBOX with a built-in HD-DVD drive is after Blu-Ray is dead and buried. If that should ever happen.
Since BD is not going away any time soon...

[Jeremy Charette]

Blu-Ray and HD DVD drives function differently with regards to how they transfer data on either end of the disc (i.e. near the center of the disc vs. near the outside). In order to have a good gaming experience, data needs to be loaded quickly to wait times between sections of a game, or when starting a new session.

As I understand it, one way Sony gets around this is by pre-caching large amounts of data from the disc onto the hard drive in the background. Microsoft chose not to do this, instead going with a conventional DVD drive that would guarantee quick loading times. The core 360 doesn't come with a hard drive, so they couldn't rely on the hard drive to pre-cache data on every 360 made. The alternative is to exclude HD DVD in the console itself, which is what they decided to do.

As Felix mentioned, HD DVD drives can't match that DVD data transfer rate yet. So you won't see an HD DVD drive in a 360 until the drives get faster.

[Felix Torres]

I don't know the technical issue here. But if PS3 incorporated BR, with no known issue regarding the data transfer rate on both new and old games, why Xbox with HD-DVD will have a problem here?


Ah, but there *are* known issues.
BD transfer rates are slow enough that games have to resort to a variety of tricks to make up for the low data rates; some cache data to the Hard Drive, which means that even if Sony *wanted* to sell a PS3 without a Hard Drive (a "core" PS3, so to speak) they couldn't, now. Others copy large amounts of data to the Hard Drive at startup so startup runs slower. Others use the extra drive space on the BD disks to hold multiple copies of the same data at different physical locations of the disk (Oblivion developers did that). And some give you the option to copy the entire game to the hard drive. 60 GB don't go all that far if you have to copy data to the drive to play the game...

Some time late this year, the first 2X BD- and HD-drives will start to appear. Some time next year, they will start to come down in price to where such a drive *might* be an option in an XBOX.

But...

Since MS has made it clear they have no intention of allowing 360 games to ship on anything but DVD, there is no *need* for such a drive for games.

MS is being very very careful here; the 360 may have a lot of digital media uses but what pays for the box is games. The 360 is a games console that happens to be very good at digital media, not a DVD player that happens to play games.

Sony has turned the PS3 into a cautionary tale of what happens when you forget that the customer has the final say and the customer for these boxes, for the most part, is a gamer.

Check the picture in my post above: could there be a *sadder* sight than a perfectly decent gaming console like PS3 getting tagged with "It also plays games."? Its a Playstation guys, not a Nuon!
http://www.dvdreview.com/html/samsung_dvd-n2000.html

That's the price of sticking a blue laser drive in PS3 and talking blu-ray instead of talking games.

I recently read Dean Takahashi's "XBOX360 Uncloaked" and found it amusing to see how the decisions the MS developers made back in 2002 and 2003 shaped the 360 and how many *right* calls they made (alongside a few not so correct ones). I would love to see a similar book about the gestation and launch of the PS3, if only to find out WHAT THE HECK WERE THEY THINKING?!!

So, please, no; lets *NOT* stick an HD or BD drive inside an XBOX this generation. Not unless it is possible to sell that same box for $199. Thing is, when that is *possible*, nobody will want it anyway, because by then standalone players will be $100.

[Jeremy Charette]

Microsoft wants to appeal to all customers.

On one end of the spectrum, they can sell a Core for $299, and appeal to the casual gamer who might otherwise (or also) buy a Wii. They're developing more family oriented games like Viva Pinata to appeal to Nintendo's market. Because they dont' have to rely on a hard drive to cache game data, they can save a few bucks and get the price down to Wii territory. If it had an HD DVD drive, the price would be higher, and load times would be longer. It wouldn't be able to compete with the Wii anymore.

On the other end, the Elite competes directly with the $599 PS3, with the 120GB hard drive, wireless controller, HDMI output...it's targeted at the hardcore gamer or enthusiast. Microsoft knows not every gamer wants an HD DVD drive, and they know that load times will be better with a conventional DVD drive, so they leave out the HD DVD drive. Saves them alot of money, and they pass it on to the customer, who sees the $479 Elite as a comparative bargain.

Microsoft knows they have to compete with Nintendo and Sony if they are going to win this generation. The choices they made during the development of the 360, and choices they continue to make (the Elite, and any future improved models) will allow them to do just that.

[Damion Chaplin]

Damion, have you tried the Video Marketplace? Its HD video content will suck your 20GB HDD dry. :P

I've browsed it, but I'm not too excited about trailers. I guess it's kinda cool to show off the Transformers trailer to friends, but beyond that... :? As for movies, I prefer to get them from Netflix. HD movies? Cool, but at $7-8 a pop, it's cheaper in the long run to save my money for the HD-DVD drive and get the HD-DVDs from Netflix... We're satisfied with SD-DVDs at the moment though.

If Netflix really does partner with Microsoft to offer rentals over the XBOX, I'll obviously have to spring for the larger HD, but then I won't necessarily need the HD-DVD drive.

[Felix Torres]

Microsoft wants to appeal to all customers.


Exactly as stated.
Consider how Nintendo is just destroying Sony in Japan while MS is holding its own everywhere else.
Conversely, even Nintendo fans admit the Wii looks...less than desirable... when viewed on HDTVs.

MS aimed at the middle ground and made compromises in their design, to appleal to the broader market, where their two competitors optimized for the two extremes. Normally, that kind of strategy gets you squeezed out of the market, except MS has a one-year lead on their opponents and, even by Sony's admission, they have a lock on hardcore gamers.
Basically, MS has been cherry-picking the gaming market, appealing to the one-new-game-a-month affluent gamer at whom the Elite is aimed, while ramping up production and their game libraries (yes, plural) to line up all the pieces for a move into the larger family console market.

If they can execute this plan they will consistently and enduringly undercut Sony and marginalize them and outlast any Nintendo push because the cheaper HDTVs get, the less desirable the Wii is as a platform.

MS has stated that their plans for 360 are long term and aimed at a life-cycle installed base of 100 million 360s. To get there, they need a core *and* they need an Elite. What they don't need is a blue laser drive or, to be honest, a Premium configuration.

I will be shocked if MS is still selling three versions of 360 by XMAS.

[cmorris]

I was with you up to here...

What they don't need is a blue laser drive or, to be honest, a Premium configuration.

I will be shocked if MS is still selling three versions of 360 by XMAS.

Ok... so we can all agree that there will be a price cut before Xmas. Let's hypothesize $100 off across the lineup.

Don't the following options:
Core $199
Premium $299
Elite $379

Make better sense than just:
Core $199
Elite $379

It seems to me that there are enough folks who want the wireless controller &amp; 20GB drive, but don't care about HDMI + huge storage to still warrant the mid-level Premium SKU at the $300 price point.

[Jeremy Charette]

I think the premium will go away if only because 20 GB drives are getting less and less cost-effective. No one wants to make them anymore. This is the problem they had with the original Xbox, the most expensive components toward the end of the life cycle were the CPU and hard drive, they were two or three generations old, and there no cost reductions to be had. With the 120 GB drive available now, the 20 GB is going to sit on shelves unbought.

My prediction:

Core: $249 (or $199 if Nintendo drops the price of the Wii)
Elite: $399, replacing the Premium, and matching a price drop on the base PS3

[Felix Torres]

I'm with Mr Charette. ;-)
I can see an updated Core with HDMI at anywhere from $199-$249, depending on how serious MS takes Nintendo. (Folks tend to forget history; Nintendo consoles sell like teenage slasher pics; great early returns followed by a relatively quick fade...)
Say $229.

Then I see them keeping a 20GB drive around for a while at $80-100, which means you could build your own "premium" pack for $299-$349.
With the Elite running $399 by Xmas, no need for the Premium.

BTW, has anybody stopped to consider that there technically is no such thing as a 360 Premium? Look at the box, guys. :twisted:

[cmorris]

Good points guys... I see where you're coming from now :)