New premium 360 coming up. Wtf?!

[Noname]

Codename Zephyr: The Real Deal?

You probably know by now that an unofficial “zephyr” may be blowing in console land. News and general tech guru Cesar of TeamXbox.com posted this story on what is being touted as system Zephyr, the follow-up to the 360’s system Xenon pseudonym.

The details on the Zephyr are sketchy and are, in fact, mostly based on a photo that cropped up on Engadget.com earlier today:

Basically, you’re looking at a carbon-copy of the back of your Xbox 360, save for the little provision right below the A/V output. That, our friends, is an HDMI port, which is much easier to say than High-Definition Multimedia Interface. HDMI is basically the new RCA, with a pixel rate to support 1080P and beyond. It's a perfect connector for things such as gaming consoles and next-gen optical disc players.





You’ll find an HDMI connector on the Playstation 3, but not on the current Xbox 360. Why? Costs, for one. Plus, maybe there’s a chance that Microsoft didn’t see the TV trends moving so quickly toward 1080p? Whatever the real reasons, it looks as though Microsoft could be changing its mind about HDMI, whether its to be more competitive in the market or for new features in the pipeline.

Also announced as part of Codename: Zephyr is a 120GB hard drive that absolutely dwarfs the one in the current 360 unit. We’re beginning to think that Microsoft fully realizes the potential of non-gaming related DLC, as it’s hard to imagine another reason for such a beefy drive (these things aren’t cheap). Can we also assume that the Zephyr will come loaded with an internal HD-DVD drive? Is the HDMI going to make use of its ability to manage the rights to digital content? There are many questions to be answered, but we’d like to await the “official” word before we get into that.

Is the Zephyr for real? It appears so from the spy photo, but we wanted to ask Microsoft spokesperson directly in an attempt to beat a CES announcement out of the, er, gates:

We have seen all types of claimed leaked photos like this show up online and as a standard policy we don’t comment on speculative items.

While we’re still in speculative mode, we thought it would be interesting to comment on the various reactions we’ve been receiving since this unofficial announcement. Is this cause to break out the left-over Cristal? Is it business-as-usual for hardcore gamers? Or is it time to pull out the Guevara and Newton T’s and coup?

Why you should jump for joy

The obvious demographic that are absolutely eating the news of a possible Zephyr alive are those that complained about no HDMI support on the Xbox 360. Many of these people are early adopters (they adopted to the next-gen early with the 360, even though they knew it didn’t support HDMI), or those that can feel the pulse of technology and where it is rapidly heading.

Of course, the other people having Zephyr parties right now are those with output devices that come equipped with HDMI ports. This is much more common now than it was even a short time ago, when the first Xbox 360’s hit the shelves. With the glut of 1080p TV’s hitting the market, an HDMI port makes even more sense, especially if the HD-DVD unit is integrated into the main shell.

We’re assuming a bigger hard drive is an upgrade that everyone wants, regardless of if it is ever filled or not. Hard drives are like dynamic headroom: you always want more, even if it never comes into play. This huge hard drive would also make the Xbox 360 a much bigger component in the Media Center fray, possibly serving as a hub for digital content networked throughout a home.

Why you should care less

So, you just bought an Xbox 360, and didn’t even have to pay the ’05 Ebay premium for it. You now have a full year’s worth of warranty to ease your mind, and a great lineup of games hitting the shelves in quarter one. Zephyr wha?

There are some that will go about gaming in the next generation with Microsoft, and slough off the interim generation if the Zephyr is the real-deal. Let us not forget about the pride of gamers that play their Xbox 360 on a standard def. TV. They could care less about component video cables, much less an HDMI port. Even the hard drive will seem like less of a big deal to those that use their Xbox 360 for gaming and gaming alone. It would take a truckload of game saves to fill up this many gigs worth of storage.

For those that want to game and not watch flicks or what-have-you, the idea of a built-in HD-DVD drive is not that special either. Again, those without a decent TV can’t take advantage of HD-DVD quality anyways. Maybe Cesar’s speculation on the current “Premium” system being this year’s “Base” system is spot-on?

There’s one other point to keep in mind here that many of the calm and collective types already assume. Microsoft announced last TGS that the current Xbox 360 can run at 1080p with a software upgrade (including the ability to play existing DVD’s in up to 1080p). There’s a good chance that we are only an adapter away from an HDMI-equipped Xbox 360 running full pixel rates on your TV.

Why you should rebel

No matter which way you slice it, if the Zephyr is, in fact, real, then this is a superior system to the premium system currently on the market. A huge hard drive and HDMI port are nice upgrades regardless of if they are utilized right away or at all (think: resale). A built-in HD-DVD drive would obviously be a massive upgrade as well, but frankly, we don’t see this one happening.

Exactly how big the Revolucion will be depends on the actual number of true upgrades that the Zephyr may have, and its price point. If the cooler running processor (another upgrade in terms of power consumption and reliability), the big hard drive and HDMI provision all ship in a package anywhere close to the price of the current Xbox 360 premium system, we suspect heads will roll in one form or another. Adding an internal HD-DVD drive and upping the cost significantly will most likely lower the number of those gamers that want to cause an upheaval, as many believe in Blu-Ray, or are simply not concerned with a game console playing movies.

The gaming community will most likely stay calm if the price sans-HD-DVD is much more than what was paid for a Premium system at retail. A high price point on the Zephyr will most likely keep Microsoft out of the cauldron, as it will be much harder for consumers to accuse them of (justified or not) planned obsolescence.