MS answer Why the Elite.

[DrunkenThumbmaster]

Just listened to the OXM podcast and they interviewed a suit about the elite. Basically he said imagine if they just came out with a 120 gig HDD. And a new gamer wanted to buy a 360 but wanted the extra storage. They would have to buy the console plus the HDD seperately and they wanted to avoid that.

Also about HDMI he says he doesn't feel it makes a difference but realize there are audiofiles out there who want it so they offered it. Take it for what it's worth I guess.

[PapaSmurf]

Whey even come out with a 120 gig HDD? They should have made cheaper less expensive HDD as to make more options for the consumer. To my knowledge, these HDD's can only be used with the 360 no? I'm curious about this as well as you can easily find a 120 for less than 180$

[Renzatic Gear]

It's called shafting people through proprietary bullcrap. Because you need a harddrive to get the most out of the 360, and MS has designed it so that only their harddrives can be used in the machine, they can charge however much they want for it.

The whole HDD thing is one of the few good ideas Sony has brought forth this generation. PC drives are cheap as hell, so which would you rather do? Pay MS $180 for a 120 gig drive, or go to Newegg and order a 500 gig for $145?

[Gamer From '78]

It's called shafting people through proprietary bullcrap. Because you need a harddrive to get the most out of the 360, and MS has designed it so that only their harddrives can be used in the machine, they can charge however much they want for it.

The whole HDD thing is one of the few good ideas Sony has brought forth this generation. PC drives are cheap as hell, so which would you rather do? Pay MS $180 for a 120 gig drive, or go to Newegg and order a 500 gig for $145?

Peeps who already own a 360 need not worry about the new drive if all they are concerned with is PLAYING GAMES! The 20-gig standard HDD that came with the premium bundle is more than enough to handle every game save you have or ever will have plus loads of downloadable game content and custom soundtracks.

The only thing you would need the bigger drive for is people who download massive amounts of content through Xbox Live. Otherwise, you are wasting your funds if you upgrade.

[Mochan]

It's surprising that Sony isn't the one doing the proprietary bullturd in this scenario; Sony is notorious for making you bend over for proprietary formats. Memstick is still such a huge pain in comparison to SD cards.

[NEO-360]

It's surprising that Sony isn't the one doing the proprietary bullturd in this scenario; Sony is notorious for making you bend over for proprietary formats. Memstick is still such a huge pain in comparison to SD cards.

True. Let us not forget how quickly Sony abandoned the last hard drive they had available for the PS2. Final Fantasy and Resident Evil Outbreak online and after that? Nada. Hopefully MS doesnt get caught up in the same similar situation with this case.:(

[MoNkEy MaN X]

Actually with the PS3 I'm completely suprised. I opened up the memory card slot area and it pretty much takes any kind of memory card. It has 3 slots, one for compact flash, one for SD, and one for the Memstick duo. Also including standard outputs on the back is really cool to, no propriatory av out to use surround sound or high def. Just a standard optical out and HDMI out. I didn't know you could swap out drives though, thats pretty cool.

[slade]

You can hook up an external USB HDD to the PS3 as well. The catch is that the PS3 will only pick it up if it is partitioned using the FAT32 format. I plan on trying this out some day.

[Mochan]

Wouldn't do to have the PS3 use NTFS would it? Well there's nothing wrong with FAT32 really it's not like you need the security options for a PS3 harddisk.

[folken001]

Wouldn't do to have the PS3 use NTFS would it? Well there's nothing wrong with FAT32 really it's not like you need the security options for a PS3 harddisk.
Well, using FAT 32 indicates that you can't never have a game fully installed on the harddrive.

[theWacoKid]

The elite is classic bait and switch. Trade people up to a sku with a higher profit margin. MS adds $80 to the price of the sku and adds perhaps another $30 to $40 tops in production costs.

MS's hdmi implementation is half assed and has audiophiles muttering expletives under their breath. The 360 is incapable of passing thru high def audio codecs like True HD, DTS-HD or uncompressed 5.1 lcpm.

[XussG]

What a ripoff. I had considered purchasing an Xbox360 (previous gen: Xbox owner) just a couple of weeks ago but was scared off by reliability issues and the rumor of this Elite unit.

Now that it's confirmed, I'm so happy I opted not to go for it. Just 18 months in and Microsoft already releases an updated version. What's to stop the next one from coming out? What happened to the good ole days of console makers making one unit and keeping it pretty much the same over the 4-5 lifespan of the system?

I think I'm going the PS3 route.