Xbox 360 Elite Announced

Microsoft has unveiled its new improved Xbox 360.

The console is fittingly called Xbox 360 Elite and it expected to go on sale in stores on April 29 in the U.S. Australia is expected the received the new version on June 1 and customers in Europe and Asia have yet to be given a release date. But is can be safe to say it will be similar to the dates already announced.

The new version of the Xbox 360 has all of the excellent qualities of the original Xbox 360, but with some upgrades. The upgrades included a bigger hard drive of 120 gigabytes and improved high definition outputs. The hard drive space is six times more than the original Xbox 360. This paves the way for storing numerous TV shows, movies and games.

The Xbox 360 Elite is also in a new colour, black. There are no changes to the consoles internal hardware so gamers can expect the excellent quality game play to remain. A series of black accessories have been released to go with the colour of the Xbox 360 Elite. These include wireless controllers, headsets and rechargeable batteries for the controllers.

The Xbox 360 Elite beats Sony's PS3 on a couple of levels. Firstly the new console comes with a HDMI cable, something PS3 customers have to purchase separately. The hard drive of 120 gigabytes is also twice the size of the Sony PS3's larger hard drive of only 60 gigabytes. However, it won't be possible to remove the hard drive from the new Xbox and put in a larger one like it is possible with the PS3. The Xbox 360 Elite also comes with a cable that allows users to transfer information from the hard drive of their original Xbox 360 to the Elite version.

The new Xbox 360 Elite still beats the Sony PS3 price wise. The US retail price is set at $479.99 dollars.

One of the biggest wished original Xbox 360 owners would like is a larger hard drive. The Elite fills this wish. It is also reported Microsoft will at some point in the near future provide a separate 120 gigabyte hard drive that users will be able to add on to their existing consoles.