New, quiet 360 DVD drive?
Already in production, apparently.
Reports suggest the Christmas 2006 production run of Xbox 360s could already be fitted with a new DVD drive, replacing the noisy Toshiba-Samsung and Hitachi-LG disc-spinners.
This new BenQ beauty is based on an old Phillips design found in the console dev kits, according to Xbox-scene, which is also hosting photo evidence to back up its claims.
Well-named forum member 'XBOXIZGOOD' reckons this new technology is better in nearly every way, having given it a good test-spin, praising the noise reduction and faster load times in games like Oblivion.
"From a lot of play time on this new drive I can tell everyone that this drive is SUPER QUIET," he virtually bellowed. "You still hear the drive spin very fast, but when the game is constantly loading data it's nearly inaudible."
So, great news if you're going to by an Xbox 360, but not such great news if you already have one. Unfortunately Microsoft was unable to comment on any of this - perhaps it's waiting for the best time to tell us it will replace our old boxes for free, or when we can expect an HDMI port and a bigger HDD. Ahem.