People were excited about Microsoft's announcement of the Elite unit, what with its black painting, HDMI support, and larger hard drive. Of course, then cost came into the issue, and suddenly gamers were up in arms and pissed. The topic that seemed to get the most attention was the cost of the hard drive by itself if all you wanted to do was upgrade your old system.

From the article:

Microsoft group product manager Aaron Greenberg hopped onto the Game Theory podcast (as picked up on by Next Generation) this week, where he defended the substantial price. "We know it is expensive and we have definitely heard that feedback but it is a little apples and oranges to compare it to internal PC hard drives because those are off the shelf drives that you have to install yourself. There is a lot of work there for your average consumer it is not a plug in and play experience for them," he said.

Upgrading a PS3 doesn't seem to have been a painful experience for consumers, however, but Greenberg claims there's more to it on Microsoft's side, and the price they're offering is actually comparable to "a 120 gig self-powered external PC drive and in that case we are seeing those retail at anywhere from $160 to $200 for comparable laptop sized external hard drives."

Read the full article over at 1up.com