Rumors of a hardware refresh for the Xbox 360 began earlier
this year, when photos
of a prototype console with HDMI output and a revised scaling chip appeared
on the Web. Coupled with multiple hints of a larger hard disk drive, it seemed
inevitable that Microsoft would release an upgraded version of its Xbox 360
sooner or later.
The April issue of Game
Informer, by way of Kotaku,
adds further backing to such speculation with an image of a black Xbox 360 said
to include a 120GB HDD, matching black accessories, HDMI output and HDMI cable
for approximately $479.
While some gaming magazines have been known to play rather
cruel April Fool’s jokes on its readers, Matt Helgeson, senior editor at Game Informer, reportedly confirmed that
the story is not a prank.
Also mentioned on the story is that owners of existing Xbox
360s may purchase the larger hard disk drive separately for “under $200.”
The current HD DVD add-on, however, will remain an
additional accessory. In line with Microsoft official statements saying that
its console will never include an internal HD DVD drive, the black Xbox 360
will come with the standard 12x DVD-ROM drive.
Microsoft is still not commenting on the possibility of a
black Xbox 360. Chris Satchell, general manager of the game developer group at
Microsoft, said
earlier this year, “We're always working on prototypes and new technologies
and just playing with stuff in Redmond to see what's interesting. I think at
the moment we have the widest available connections on the system. If you want
to get great HD, I think we've got a good solution for that.”
“At the moment, everything you might have seen is just
looking at our experimentation back in Redmond, not really a product that we're
thinking about announcing,” said Satchell.