Xbox – What are the differences between the 4GB and the 250 GB versions of the Xbox 360

Right now there are 3 Editions on the market:

• 360 Arcade
• 360 Elite
• 360 Slim

Now the Slim is replacing the Elite, so that one will be phased out. There is also plans for a slim arcade version which will phase out the arcade. As a result neither the Arcade nor the Elite are currently in production.

The major difference between the Elite and the Arcade is the presence of a Hard drive. While the Arcade does have a small amount of on board memory, it isn't much.

Additionally, the Elite comes with a Headset and Ethernet cable.

The new Slim also comes with hard drive, headset, but lacks the Ethernet cable in favor of built in wifi (which must be purchased separately for Arcade and Elite).

You can still find the standard Elite with 120GB HD or 250GB HD and 1 or 2 Controllers (all others come with just 1 controller).

It is worth noting that the Slim is branded as Elite, even though it is different than the current Elite you can find on the market. The noticeable difference is the slim being smaller and having a less rounded exterior.

First, realize that, among other things, your old drive will not work in the new 360 Slim, so you would need to find one of the old models in order to keep your harddrive. If you do happen upon the old design, the second thing you should realize is that a lot of the downloaded content on your harddrive is keyed to your current console. There are ways around it, but it isn't as straight forward as plugging your old harddrive into your new console. Note that this method should also work with the new slim models.

As for the differences between the 4GB and 250GB models, the 4GB model is pretty analogous to the old Arcade models. It comes with an empty harddrive bay, which accepts the same style harddrive as the 250GB model. Some games may not allow all of the features for the 4GB consoles, although this may have been fixed. As far as I know, the rest of the hardware is the same. You could just buy the harddrive to put in a 4GB console, but that's paying an unnecessary premium. Personally, I would get the 250GB slim model if I were forced to replace my console at my cost.