We received an interesting tip that we thought we'd share with the group. Windows expert and all-around bon vivant Paul Thurrott recently previewed Microsoft's new Arc mouse on his personal blog, detailing the device with a handful of photos. In the final shot of the series, what appear to be two Xboxes side-by-side can be seen in the lower right-hand corner... but one of those consoles looks thinner than the other. The appearance of what might be a
slimmer Xbox 360 has (needless to say) sparked a debate amongst our editors here. Some say it's nothing -- a matter of angle -- while others argue that this could be just the scenario in which you'd see a leak of a new form factor. Either way, you can't simply brush off the differences here, and a little Photoshop matching on our end proved that these edges are decidedly different in angle. So we put it to the Engadget reader: is this a sign of things to come, or just our imaginations running wild?
Update: And we have our answer! Paul Thurrott has gone to the trouble of
detailing just exactly what's going on here, and it
is an angle issue. Needless to say, we've got a lot of deflated dreams and lightened pockets in the office today.
[Thanks, Brian]
posted September 25th 2008 9:37AM
Blu-ray drive.
http://community.winsupersite.com/blogs/paul/archive/2008/09/25/slimmer-xbox-360-spied-in-the-wild-sorry-but-no.aspx
Guys... it's got no hard drive on the top, so it looks a little leaner compared to the one that does have a hard drive. (makes a lot of sense that there is a memory unit sitting on it as that's what you've got to use when you have no hard drive)
More importantly - there is a drawer unit in front of it in the photo, concealing the edge... that's why it looks a little thinner. Surprised no-one noticed that.
Maybe that's the new stand alone media center box that was hinted about here:
http://www.engadgethd.com/2008/09/17/microsoft-planning-la-veuve-de-media-center/
Err. Never mind, story's updated. But I can dream...
oooops!
What you are seeing is wide angle distortion at the edges... its not necessarily just an issue with cheap lenses either. Multi-thousand dollar wide angle lenses will do the same. Engadget fought physics and physics won.
Im more interested as to why his ruler has DARE written on it, maybe its code for something ? 0_o
I read what he posted on his blog later, and I checked out his images. I think he's lying to try and cover his ass. You can tell by the curve in the plastic that the one on the left is smaller. Throw these in photoshop and rotate them, then measure. The one on the left is smaller. And it's closer to the the center of the photo, so it should appear larger.
I know I'm going to sound totally dumb.
I think it's still possible for it to have been a mistake on his part. I can't understand how the same device can look totally slimmer than another identical device in one picture and then in another picture it looks the same.
It's possible that this is a new slimmer build and he messed up. But then again it's also possible that he is telling the truth and we are mistaken.
Look like a m-itx PC to me.
I think it is an angle shot as well. It looks like part of the desk is cutting it off from our view, angled shot, hence skewing the actual appearence.
They ARE on the other hand making a blue xbox 360, which will have a blu-ray drive built in. Also instead of a green ring around the button, it will be orange.
I know when it comes out you'll all remember this post. Trust me on this one.
If wish we had a higher resolution version of the picture so we could really compare. It could one of the cases where the image got distorted on the corners because of the lens. :|
you cant go slimmer the hard drive wont fit!
I wish the original pic had better resolution because the new one doesn't seem to be full of air holes on the top while the original seemed to just have a little square in the front. I don't own an xbox360 so I might be missing some sort of plastic cover that you put to cover these air holes or something.
Is really fake if you enlarge the image and raise the contrast you can see that the faker is a really bad Photoshoper...
The one on the left is a normal 360... the one on the right is, well I dunno, but I will send some pics to engadget with my memory card on the top like that so you can see...
Well the one on the right is closer to the camera, it's higher than the left and the left is partially hidden by the table. So if you take that into consideration....yeah, it's probably the same. But it does look smaller at first glance.