The “Break it Down” Blog

XBox 360 Elite… sounds impressive right? It’s $479 after all, more expensive than any other XBox 360 at launch (except maybe the Platinum bundle from Walmart?)

So the Elite brings to the table a 1080p/HDMI connection and a 120GB hard drive… oh and it’s black.

But wait, the 1080p over HDMI has got to be amazing right?

Wrong, according to Engadget’s comparison, it’s almost identical in quality. Which gives further support to the comment that everything on the 360 is infact 720p and simply scaled to alternative resolutions.

• What about support for next-gen audio codecs like TrueHD?! NOPE
• But it’s got wireless built in right?! HELL NO
• The HD-DVD drive is built in now… maybe? NO WAY
• But it’s got to be quieter with the new drives and improved fans… right? NOPE
• No worries, at least it won’t run so hot….? NOT A CHANCE
• It uses the smaller 65nm chips, better internals? Bitch, please, there is nothing different about the hardware in this thing.

Then why am I paying almost $500 for it?! Cause… it’s matte black instead of matte white? Because Microsoft despises its customers?

Update #1: There are some very interesting rumblings going on in the industry that suggest the reason for the Elite refresh, that only changes the HD size and the HDMI connector is due to all the stale XBox 360s sitting on shelves. It’s already been shown that the XBox 360 is going to see a 65nm refresh anyway in 2007, so why re-release this tired model with almost nothing new on it? Repurposed XBox 360s is why… the rumor is that they are simply pulling them back in, gutting them and repurposing them into chasis that have the new HDMI connection and throwing a bigger HD on them. Sure is a hell of a lot cheaper than a new part I suppose.