Matt Gerlach

The Xbox 360 Elite is here.

The Elite SKU for the Xbox 360 family has officially been announced as of 12am EST today.  The New SKU, takes the same great Xbox 360 experience, but adds the black matte finish, an HDMI port for your audio/video needs, as well as bring the black matte finish to console accessories (like the controllers, wired headset, and play/charge kit).

While this new SKU, priced at $479, is new and has some new features, especially the standard 120GB HDD, the experience a user receives from the system will be NO different from that the other 2 SKUs.  A Premium user will notice no performance issues as compared to the Elite, as the Core will not notice anything as well.  The only difference is the black color, the larger standard HDD, the black accessories (that will also be sold at retail along with the 120GB HDD), and an HDMI port for slightly improved video.

You can read/see more about it at these various links:

• On10.Net has EXCLUSIVE VIDEO of the Elite SKU
• Major Nelson has a special Mid-Week interview with Albert, one of the leads for the Elite.
• Major Nelson also has some of the first pictures of the Elite in the Wild (aka his office).
• The Gamerscoreblog has the Press Release, that was pushed live this morning.
• Gizmodo has a pretty good interview with Albert as well.

The Elite is going to be a great addition to the Xbox 360 family, this coming April 29th, in the US and Canada (only initially!)!!