The Xbox 360 elite and its accompanying hard drive may certainly be driving a hard bargain amongst gamers, but Microsoft is quick to defend their new product. CVG reports that Microsoft's Aaron Greenberg defended it recently on the Game Theory podcast, saying that the cost of the new drive was comparable to other drives on the market.

Greenberg notes one difference with their new drive to the ones out on the market, which makes the current comparisons somewhat moot. Instead of mastering the art of installing a new drive yourself, the Xbox 360 Elite drive is a plug-and-play drive, which is a different type of drive from the ones modders manage to add to their units. Said Greenberg,

What we have done is release a smaller laptop size drive. If you compare what we are offering with a real plug and play drive the closest thing would be to tale a 120 gig self powered external PC drive and in that case we are seeing those retail at anywhere from US$ 160 to US$ 200