Microsoft
announced yesterday that it will be replacing its 20GB Xbox 360
Premium with a new model this August. Giving consumers more bang for
their buck, or gigabytes in this case, the new 60GB Xbox 360 Premium
will be available for the same price as the currently available 20GB
model ($349.99 USD/CAD). Aside from the bundled hard drive, nothing
in the new model will really be different, unless Microsoft also
includes the new Jasper chipset inside the console. This is
certainly
a possibility as the new chipset was speculated for an August release
quite a few months ago.
“
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,” said Albert Penello, Xbox director of product management
at Microsoft. “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.”
Consumers
who, for whatever reason, can't wait the extra month to get their
hands on an Xbox 360 should be happy to know that, in preparation for
the 60GB Premium's upcoming release, Microsoft has dropped the price
of the 20GB Xbox 360 Premium by $50 to $299.99 USD/CAD. That's
certainly a good deal if you were only considering getting the Xbox
360 Arcade, which only comes with a 256MB memory card instead of a
hard drive, no component cables, Ethernet cable or headset, and is
priced at $279.99 USD/CAD. For the extra $20, you get the 20GB hard
drive, and all of the other accessories mentioned above. Not bad.