While the pricing of the xbox360 is better than the PS3, I object to how noisy the console is. Will the Elite be quieter? If so, I may consider getting one.

$480 = £480 pounds, doesn't it?

At least where hardware is concerned.... ;)

Cooler? I bet everyone is anxious whether or not this console will last more than 4-6 months before coming up with 3RLOD...

...my son is playing on his Xbox in the room next door.

That's less than I paid for my Premium XBOX 360 earlier this year :(

Oh well; I'm still having a blast. I am a bit of a M$ fan, but this XBOX kicks ass - the games are great (well, they suit my tastes) and the graphics are the best thing to hit my 46" HD TV.

I must admit the HDMI and extra big HDD are tempting; maybe I can sneak one in without the wife noticing?

Sadly, we don't know for sure if the UK Elite will ship with the die-shrunk chips yet. The real point of it all, however, is that we'll be getting the Video Marketplace at last. Without it there wouldn't be much point; there really are only so many demos and 50Mb Live Arcade games that you need to fill your drive with at once.

Des, if your wife asks, just tell her you got a skin or a case mod for it. Besides, if she's clued in enough to know about it (ie, that won't fool her), then I'm sure she'll be able to appreciate the new features!

I've had mine going for 8 months, no rings of death, but I keep mine clean, on a shelf, open to the air, and doesnt move much.

My friend had to change his once already.

I was expecting it to come out as the same price as the premium (and the other versions to drop price a little). But it's ~ £50 more expensive at £329.99 on play.

My tv has plenty of HDMI sockets but only one set of components which are already in use so was looking forward to the Elite. Far too expensive though so will have to stick to my Xbox 1 and Wii

Think MS need to man up and re-engineer this thing completely. Okay, they rushed it to get a head start on PS3, fairly understandable ploy, but the failure rates recently revealed are truly shocking. I would not want to risk the hassle of getting a nice new shiny toy that turns out to have all the entertainment value of a plastic brick (with three little red lights on it), even if it is an "elite" dead brick.

So have they sorted the stupid failure rate??? I cannot believe they have or else they would surely be shouting from the rooftops about how great the new version is.... Seems like this one will be hit by the same failure rate to me. Previously I had read that the new 65nm chips would be delayed until late in the year. I wonder if that is why the Japanese are getting theirs later, beause M$ don't need any issues in that part of the world. Come M$ tell us if the issues have been resolved. I had read one interview that hinted at an improvement in that dept, but I need more.

Most of those Xbox units that have failed probably wouldn't have if people had left the recommended amount of room around the unit for cooling purposes. I have several friends who had their units fail but they had them shoved in the corner of an enclosed space.

No air flow equals heat build up which causes failure.