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Originally Posted by eXo
Not one year after release.
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Or
four months, for that matter.
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Besides, every hardware revision that I can think of was to decrease production costs with smaller form factors, smaller/cooler integrated chips, and exclusion of unused ports.
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Elite is not really a hardware revision in the strictest sense, it doesn't replace Core and Premium models. Right now it's an additional SKU aimed primarily at people who'd like to use their console as a movie player.
HDMI port gives then another option for connecting the console and addresses any potential concerns over the Image Constraint Token flag. The larger hard drive gives them more space for downloading content from Live Video Marketplace, and once IPTV support is enabled, it'll probably be used for TiVo-like functionality. As such, Elite is positioned somewhere halfway between a regular console and a device like PSX.
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This is the first time they have released a new hardware model which is
A: More Expensive
B: Not anymore efficient, cheaper to produce, or smaller
C: Adds minimal capabilities.
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The Silver Slimline PS2 was more expensive than other models at the time of its introduction and it added only minimal capabilities (i.e. none). We don't know whether the Elite Xbox 360 is more efficient or cheaper to produce despite the fact that its CPU is still being manufactured in the same 90 nm process (its Ana scaler chip has been replaced with a new Hana scaler, however, at least that's what some pre-announcement reports claimed).
Still, I agree that nothing like this has ever been done before, but there's a lot about this console generation that's never been done before. Never before has a console launched with two separate models, for instance (at least as far as I know it hasn't). Just because it's new, doesn't mean it's necessarily bad.
Frankly, I'm not sure if it's going to be good (for Microsoft) either, but let the market decide.
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The hard drive could have been released as a simple hd in a box. The hdmi is the only addition here, and frankly, it was a huge oversight to leave that out in the first place. now consumers are being forced to pay extra for a basic high-def feature from a supposedly high-def machine.
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If you'd like to learn more about Microsoft's reasons for introducing the Elite model instead of just releasing the hard drive add-on, listen to the last Major Nelson podcast.
