The Xbox 360 Elite is here!
Well, sort of.
Locating one of these buggers is proving to be a tad difficult. The demand for the Elite isn’t as ridiculously high as the Wii, but there seems to be a surprising shortage of these new Xbox 360 systems.
I was lucky enough to secure one at launch – I have my ways.
My personal experience with the original Xbox 360 is a love/hate relationship. I love my 360, don’t get me wrong; I love the Gamerscore, downloadable content and games, but I hate the fact I seem to be playing Russian Roulette with the console every time I turn it on.
I am on my third original Xbox 360 console. The other two consoles suffered from frozen screen syndrome (which I have been told is the result of a bad motherboard) and the well known ‘Red Ring of Death.’ While warranty support has been helpful, the fact that I’ve had to go through three consoles is just plain sad.
My 360 hard drive was the only thing that has stayed with me since my original purchase. It’s received quite a bit of use, and I’ve always had to delete old content in order to download new goodies, which left me with two options: purchase the new 120GB hard drive or just bite the bullet and upgrade to the Elite.
Microsoft has been very adamant that all existing Xbox 360 gamers should just purchase the 120GB Hard Drive. With the drive’s price at an obscene $179.99, the upgrade path isn’t practical. GameStop was offering a $250 trade in on the Premium 360, effectively making your cost for a new elite $229.99 or only $50 more than the hard drive alone.
There is only one catch with this plan.
When you trade in your old console, you have to give them your old hard drive, and you must be trading in towards the purchase of a new Xbox 360 Elite. You cannot trade in your original 360 after the fact and receive the same $250 credit. This is a problem, since you’ll lose all your save games and downloadable content.
You could of course just purchase a memory card and download all your game saves to it. All of the downloadable content can be re-downloaded for free if you’ve purchased it when you upgrade. Of course, you can also re-rip all your music to your new hard drive. Your other option is to just bite the bullet and buy the Elite without a trade-in credit and trade in your old 360 later or put it on eBay. This was the route I traveled as used Pro systems were going for $250 to $300.
As most experienced gamers know, the differences between the Elite and the Pro system are:
- The Elite is black while the Pro/Core is white! This is of critical importance.
- The Elite has a 120GB hard drive while the Pro has a 20GB drive. (OK, this one actually is important.)
- An HDMI connector and cable is in the box.
There’s also a revised audio cable, which plugs into the AV port on the back of the Xbox, so if your TV does not have an Audio Out (HDMI also contains audio), you can still use digital audio to your receiver. This may come in very handy if you upgrade to an audio only 5.1 receiver.
