It's reached that stage again in the console war. Everyone's made their big opening salvo – now it's down to all sides taking pops at each other from the trenches by releasing add-ons and special editions.

But even knowing all of that the Xbox 360 Elite is a peculiar beast. Sure, it's nice to have a bigger 120GB hard drive and an HDMI 1.2 connection, but is it really enough to justify a stealthy new paint job?

Something's missing...
It certainly justifies the extra £60 on the price tag. If you still haven't plumped for one side in the PS3, Xbox and Wii War, you'd be bonkers to go for a non-Elite Xbox.

The hard drive alone is worth it. Hand on heart, the HDMI connection is nice, but it's shades of difference – and with HDMI slots often hard to come by on first or second-gen hi-def sets, it can actually be a bonus to be able to run 1080p content via a component HD cable.

There are also some obvious bits missing – like, why is there no HD-DVD drive built in? More importantly, why didn't they build in Wi-Fi, since the big sell here is about downloadable content?