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E3: 60GB Xbox 360 Pro revealed

Category: E3 2008, Posted: 07/17/2008 at 10:58AM CDT by Frank Ling, Content Contributor

e3It was pretty much a given that Microsoft would be showing off a new Xbox 360 at E3. The big question on everyone's mind was what sort of machine would it be?

Microsoft answered that question by unveiling the Xbox 360 Pro 60GB game console.

Outside of the obvious upgrade to a 60GB hard drive, other amenities rumored for this newest iteration of the 360 may include ATI Xenos GMCH, a smaller 65nm CPU, and other internal performance upgrades, although Microsoft has not made any official announcements on these improvements yet.

Albert Penello, Xbox director of product management at Microsoft said, "We know consumers need more and more space to store the amazing digital content Xbox 360 offers, and we're giving it to them at no extra charge. No one device offers the depth and breadth of entertainment that Xbox 360 can deliver, and now you'll have three times the storage to manage all that great content."

The one issue that was not brought up concerning the 60GB Xbox 360 Pro was its reliability. Since the launch of the original Xbox 360, it has been plagued with various hardware issues and problems.

The most notable being the Red Ring of Death, so called because of the red LED status message that appears on the face plate of the game console, indicating that the machine has entered a failure state that can only be addressed by sending the 360 in for repairs or replacement. It is estimated that Microsoft has spent $1 billion on repairs regarding hardware failures connected with RRoD and other issues.

The 60GB Xbox 360 Pro will be priced at $349 while the standard 20GB model will cost $299. The Arcade and Elite models will continue to be sold at $279 and $449 respectively.

With the arrival of the 360 Pro, Microsoft will phase out the 20GB model at the reduced price of $299, "while supplies last."
Posted by Cobra951 on 07/17/2008 at 01:31PM

See? I was right. MS pretty much needed to boost the HDD size at no extra cost in order to keep making money out of DLC. 13 GB (on the so-called 20-GB drive) is way too small for HD movies, full Xbox originals, and all the other fancy DLC for the growing games library. Add the reported upcoming capability to copy full 360 games to the HDD before playing them, and a realistic storage size becomes essential.

Posted by jahcriado on 07/24/2008 at 10:38AM

I love my 360 but it would be really nice if, like the PS3, I could put my own freaking HDD in the machine. I have 3 extra massive HD's just sitting on my desk from a computer rebuild I just did. At least give me an adapter to plug it into. Hey, mod world, get on the ball with this!

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