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Introducing the brand new Xbox 360


david91

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there\'s a new Xbox 360 in town. Smaller, thinner and finished in glossy black, Microsoft surprised attendees at the E3 tradeshow in Los Angeles by revealing that not only is the revised version of the console well into production, it\'s also set for release in the USA later next week.

 

The new console itself replaces the current Xbox 360 Elite and provides some useful hardware upgrades over and above the new glossy finish and touch-sensitive power and eject buttons.

 

First up there\'s the sheer storage available within the svelte new box. The default 120GB hard drive from the current ‘Elite’ is now a thing of the past, with the new Xbox 360 offering a comparatively enormous 250GB capacity. The hard drive now sits inside the unit rather than in an external caddy, although it\'s unclear if it can still be replaced with another drive by users looking to store even more data.

 

Next up is the inclusion of wireless internet connectivity in the box. One of the advantages of PS3 and even the Wii has been the fact that you don\'t need to use a cable to connect the console to the net - Wi-Fi is built-in for easy access. The disadvantage of the older 360 was the fact that an Ethernet cable was required for access with wireless available only as an expensive option costing up to £70. Now, the very latest ultra-fast \"N\" standard Wi-Fi is available immediately.

 

Perhaps the most noticeable difference between the new model and the old one is the audio level. The Xbox 360 has always had something of a noise problem, whether it\'s from loud fans or the annoying, blasting noise of the internal DVD drive. The new model, according to Microsoft, promises to be \"whisper quiet\", presumably through the inclusion of a replacement drive along with better cooling.

 

Other enhancements to the new unit include more USB ports. The older model featured one port on the rear and two on the front. This has been bumped up considerably with three on the back and two on the front, so five USBs on the newer, smaller unit up against a mere three on the original console. All your old Xbox 360 peripherals should work on the new machine with just a couple of exceptions. With the shift to an internal hard drive, Xbox 360\'s older external drives now have nowhere to slot into - so hopefully Microsoft will be providing some sort of mechanism for copying your data across to the new drive. Also, the old memory units (or MUs as they are called) are now obsolete - there\'s no port to plug them into on the new machine.

 

So, all of the new enhancements effectively make the new 360 a match for Sony\'s PS3 Slim in many ways (Blu-ray apart) and exceeding it in others, with faster Wi-Fi and a larger array of USB ports. While the new machine is expected in shops later this week in the USA, Europeans will have to wait. Microsoft says the new 360 is set for release on 16 July, with the price confirmed as £199 – the same as the current Xbox Elite, in fact.

 

So, now you’ve seen it, do you want one...?

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