New Xbox 360 (Zephyr) Dated and Priced!

Rumors of Zephyr, the new Xbox 360 have returned. Rumors of the past have included blurry pictures, international launch locations, and even a misidentified launch developer unit. This time it’s the retail locations on our own homeland confirming the rumors.

Retailers in the USA are confirming a new SKU for Xbox 360 is now in their systems. It will be available on May 1st for $479.99 USD. While some people here on 2old2play were skeptical that we’d see Zephyr before the holiday season, there were also some other clues that it would land before June. Hints were dropped in the Microsoft earnings report via the drop in units being shipped through the first quarter which 2old2play speculated was to reduce the number of units in the supply chain. Sure enough, Zephyr looks like it’ll be here just before summer.

So what does Zephyr have that we may want? Most of it I’m sure current owners can get along without. First of, this will most likely be the Xbox 360 that comes with the smaller, cooler running processors. These processors are also key to lowering the manufacturing cost of the Xbox 360 which may eventually lead to a price drop. More then likely will also include the DVD Rom found in the latest model Xbox 360’s that run much quieter. If all recent accounts are true, the Zephyr will sport an HDMI port and hopefully for the cost increase, an included cable. HDMI really might not matter to this generation though, most TV’s that have HDMI ports also have DVI ports which you can tie into with the VGA cable and be DRM / HDCP free. However if you really think you need HDMI, it’ll be there.

The last upgrade which is probably the most sought after upgrade is a larger hard drive. Since the Xbox 360’s launch people have been vocal about the small size of the hard drive and Zephyr is said to include a 100 EXTRA Gigs of space. I think we can safely assume that it won’t be long after that we’ll see a stand-alone 120GB hard drive upgrade for current generation Xbox 360 owners to purchase.

With how hard Microsoft tries to squash rumors or Zephyr, they just can’t keep a lid on it. It’s understandable that Microsoft wants retailers (and thus themselves) to sell through the older stock first and confirming a new model could hinder that goal. This news is just simply too big for such a passionate community to keep to themselves. We know it’s coming but Microsoft is still in deny, deny, deny mode.