Xboxic found and translated a German story from Xbox-Archiv that's keeping the black Xbox 360 rumor alive. Xbox-Archiv noticed that a few large stores were selling Xbox 360 Premium packs at 299 euro instead of the standard 350 euro wholesale price. They did some investigation and found out that the cheaper Core pack was going extinct, and quickly being cycled out of inventory. Here's the awkward Germenglish translation:

From reliable sources we experienced now that Microsoft plans release of a new Xbox 360 version in May 2007. The new Xbox 360 will that already admits black model to be, which has an HDMI exit and a larger non removable disk (120 GB). The price of the new Xbox 360 will lie between €350 and €450, an exact product name is not present, the internal code name Zephyr is rather improbable as sales designation.

The rumors don't end there though, Xbox-Archiv also claims to know that Halo 3 will be released in November. I guess the idea is "Hey, it worked well for Gears of War, let's try to outdo Epic Games." Making it black to differentiate it from the Premium pack is cool, but I think we all know they're just trying to confuse noob parents looking for PS3s. They May date makes a lot of sense too - it would give Microsoft all of May and June to gather sales data and then brag about it at E3 in July to battle whatever their competition brings to the table. It's looking like a complete opposite from last year's E3 where Nintendo dominated.

I hope you didn't just buy an Xbox 360 recently - the original Xbox 360 was codenamed "Xenon" and was released without HDMI cable support, but the new 360s that will come out in mid 2007 has received more than just a code name. The new "Zephyr" 360s will feature an HDMI port for full digital 1080p prowess. Besides this and the cooler 65nm processor, Engadget is also promising that a 120GB will in deed be on the way for the 360. No mentions of price yet, but I don't see Microsoft raising the pricetag when the PS3 is trying to catch up to their 360 sales. 

PS - The much acclaimed Irrational Games FPS BioShock will be released for both the Xbox 360 and PC in five months from now in June.