• Reuters, Thursday, July 5, 2007 11:35 AM

Microsoft is launching the advanced version of its Xbox 360 game console, Xbox 360 Elite, on October 11 in Japan, a country where sales of its game gear trail far behind rival machines from Nintendo and Sony.

The Elite's 120-gigabyte hard drive, six times bigger than the regular Xbox 360's hard drive and twice as big as that of Sony's PlayStation 3 console, can store a library of high-definition TV shows. It is set to sell for ($390), compared with $243 for the most basic version of the Xbox 360.

Although popular in the United States, the Xbox 360 has seen slow sales in Japan. Microsoft sold 122,565 of the consoles in the first half of this year in Japan, the home turf of Sony and Nintendo.

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