Article:
Microsoft Launches Standalone Xbox 360 250GB HDD

Microsoft has continued updating their Xbox 360 platform’s hardware with a slightly larger storage platform in the form of a 250GB HDD. Though initially available as only part of an Xbox 360 Exclusive Elite bundle, the drive is now purchasable by those that need to bump up their console storage in a standalone package. It was previously available as such to Japanese customers, but now it’s coming to the Western shores.

Cost for the drive is $129.99 in the US, and £79.99 in the UK, which may seem not too unreasonable, but those of you considering the purchase do need to remember how cheap traditional PC hard drives have become these days, making this pricing seem somewhat of a joke. £50 will buy you well over double this amount of storage in a traditional platform, with £80 putting you up in the terabyte leagues, if not higher.

Still, considering previous iterations of Microsoft’s Xbox based storage, this is the most cost effective solution (in $ per GB) to date, with it coming in at around 3GB per every pound spent on the drive.

Anyone who plays this smart however, including those currently sporting a far smaller 20GB HDD, would do well to look for the soon-to-be phased out 120GB drives, which many will be dumping on auction sites like eBay when they pick up this latest piece of Xbox 360 hardware. Microsoft is also likely to rush out their last stock of these drives in order to help push the new storage platform making price reductions very likely.

So far Amazon.co.uk has a listing for a pre-order on the drive itself, with the UK release date of the hardware expected to be on the 16th of April.

This is actually the second update to come from the Microsoft camp in the past few weeks, with the last one being a little more unofficial in nature. The update showed off images of the next iteration of the Xbox 360 hardware with the GPU and CPU both shrunk down to a 45nm process and stuck on the same die, reducing power consumption and heat output presumably. This could even hint at a “slim” offering for the console in line with a similar package offered late last year by Sony’s PS3 platform.