Report: Black Xbox 360 Slated for April

Rumors of a new Xbox 360 with a bigger hard drive, an HDMI output and a black case have been floating around since January, but at least one gaming magazine claims to have the story cold. Game Informer is reporting (by way of Kotaku) that a new 360 is indeed on the way—as early as next month, in fact—and that the updated console will arrive with a 120GB hard drive, an HDMI output and black accessories to match the new shell, all for $479.

Assuming the Game Informer story is on target, what does it mean for those shopping for a new console—or for those of us who just bought a beige 360? Let's break it down. For an additional $80 (the original Platinum edition of the 360 retails for $399), you're getting the new black case, 100GB more hard drive space and the HDMI output. The black shell is all about style. The HDMI output lets the 360 send a full 1080p signal to your HDTV, assuming you have a 1080p set—nice, but as of this writing, only the just-released Virtua Tennis 3 natively supports the higher 1080p resolution, and all the Video Marketplace content is, at best, 720p. (The original 360 displays 1080p video over its VGA output, but not all HDTV sets have VGA inputs, whereas HDMI connections are far more common.) The 120GB hard drive is clearly the biggest deal, allowing you to store dozens of TV shows (which usually run about 500MB in size) as well as plenty of music and pictures. Movies from the Video Marketplace come with an expiration date, so you won't be storing that many films anyway. Then again, if Microsoft's plans to turn the 360 into an IPTV set-top box come to fruition, the larger hard drive will surely be a factor.

My recommendations? If you're purely about the games, your TV screen is smaller than 42 inches (which means you won't be able to discern resolution much higher than 720p) and you think beige is beautiful, save your money and stick with the Platinum edition. But if you have a jumbo-sized HDTV and you're looking to turn your Xbox 360 into your digital media hub...wait a few weeks and see what happens.

Finally, how about those of with the original 360? While we might be stuck with component and VGA connections for now (although for my money, 1080i resolution over component looks just fine on my 42-inch Westinghouse HDTV), Game Informer claims that a new 120GB hard drive will soon be available for less than $200. And you can always slap some black paint on that beige shell.