March 28, 2007
Elite, but what’s the drive like?
John Rodman, Xbox group product manager, has a car analogy for the new Elite addition to the 360 family.
“Think of BMW with its 3, 5 and 7 Series, we are now adding the 7 series,” he said.
Microsoft’s 3 is its Xbox 360 Core System, which sells without a hard drive for $300. Its 5 is the Premium System, with a 20Gb hard drive and costing $400. Its 7 - the Elite - has a 120Gb drive and HDMI high-definition connections for $480.
But the 7 Series ranks as BMW’s ultimate luxury car and the Elite does not quite match up to that in games console terms.
Its hard drive is twice the size of the $600 PlayStation 3, but while the PS3 has a Blu-ray high-definition DVD drive, the Elite has not been fitted with a comparable HD-DVD drive.
Part of the reason may be price - adding the drive would make the Elite at least as expensive as the PS3 – but the absence also suggests a lack of confidence that HD-DVD will survive in the standards war with Blu-ray.
Elite users will instead have to satisfy any HD cravings with Microsoft’s online offerings through Xbox Live.
Mr Rodman emphasised that Microsoft was number one in the US in the online distribution of TV shows and movies to the living room. It was also the only online distributor of high-definition films and television programming.
The Elite’s 160Gb hard drive will allow users to store more of their downloaded TV shows and high-definition movies.
It also points the way to the Xbox becoming a digital video recorder when the software upgrade is available later this year to enable live IPTV.
Microsoft research shows users are spending more than 40 per cent of their time using the Xbox 360 for music, movies and TV.
With a host of new media content partnerships announced today, that figure can only rise further.
(Footnote: The black Xbox Elite should be a good living-room match up alongside Pioneer’s Elite range of receivers and TVs – as long as Pioneer doesn’t mind Microsoft mimicking the brand.)
