Just as Sony is completing its budget-draining worldwide rollout of the pricey new PlayStation 3, Microsoft comes along with a new and enhanced Xbox 360. It has an improved design, too.
Both companies are positioning their products as digital media hubs, not just boxes for the gaming crowd. To that end, Microsoft has added a high-definition plug so users can connect it to an HDTV set and get optimal resolution. That’s a feature, by the way, that Apple included in its new digital media hub, Apple TV, which started shipping last week.
The new Microsoft model comes in black, has a 120GB hard drive and goes on sale in the States in April for $480. That includes an HDMI connector cable. Release dates and prices for other countries were not announced.
“Today’s games and entertainment enthusiast has an insatiable appetite for digital high-definition content,” said Peter Moore, corporate VP at for Microsoft’s Xbox operation.
The top-of-the-line PlayStation 3, which also has an HDMI port, has a 60GB hard disk, a Blu-ray player and goes for $600. Sony and Apple do not include the pricey HDMI cable, however.
Microsoft says it will continue to sell the existing Xbox 360 systems and offer a 120GB hard drive for $179.99.
One thing that the PS3 has over the Xbox 360 is its built-in next-generation DVD player – a Blu-ray drive. The Xbox 360 doesn’t include an HD DVD drive, the high-def format Microsoft favors over the Sony-backed Blu-ray, even in the new model. An HD DVD player is only available as an add-on, which means yet another box – and another $200.
Users of both boxes can download game extras, images and video to the hard drives with PlayStation users accessing the PlayStation Network and Xbox 360 users access the Xbox LIVE online service.
Apple TV also connects directly to the TV set, but its users have to download music, TV shows, movies and other content to their PC. The argument is that managing content on a PC is easier than managing it on a gaming console.
At this point the Apple TV doesn’t play games, but how far away can that be? The same logic that said Apple eventually had to go into the mobile handset business, for better or worse, says that it will have to add games to Apple TV in order to compete with Xbox and PlayStation.
The PlayStation’s major disadvantage, compared to Apple TV and Xbox, is that it cannot connect wirelessly to a PC to play PC-stored audio and video.
Next up for the Xbox 360, according to Microsoft, is to add the functionality that would let the device be used as a set-top box for Microsoft’s version of IPTV that such as AT&T and British Telecom have committed to offering.