Xbox 360: new NXE and 1TB hard drive?

by Dean Evans at Thursday 25th June, 2009 at 2:35 pm [0 comments]

Could the Xbox 360 be getting a new, faster dashboard update this year? How about a 1TB hard drive to cope with digital downloads?

Microsoft has always had big plans to grow the Xbox 360 from a mere HD games console into a full-fat home entertainment system.

Xbox spokesman Major Nelson has apparently hinted that a faster update to the NXE dashboard is on the way with “a lot of very cool new features.”

At this year’s E3, Microsoft showed just what its console is capable of with Project Natal, an expanded online video line-up, streaming 1080p, plus Last.fm, Facebook and Twitter integration.

1TB hard drive incoming?

Microsoft also used the E3 expo to announce that it would be offering full digital game downloads this year. New releases will be available online at the same time that the boxed versions are sitting on store shelves.

Of course, the arrival of digital game downloads and an expanded movie catalogue is at odds with the storage capacity of the Xbox 360 hard drive. Original consoles shipped with a 20GB unit, while newer models have upped this to 60GB and 100GB.

These sizes are too small for all the content that Microsoft hopes to make available. It’s why Wedbush Morgan analyst Michael Pachter believes that Microsoft is prepping a massive hard drive upgrade.

“I don’t see the timing between new release and digital download being a function of anything other than hard drive sizes,” Pachter told GamesIndustry.biz.

“I think as soon as we have large hard drives - think the rumoured Project Natal ‘new’ Xbox 360 with a terabyte of storage in 2010 - we’ll have day-and-date downloads.”

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