The pre-launch rumors are cranking up ahead of the Natal public unveiling that is coming in just a few short weeks ahead of E3. Sources seem to be suggesting to us now that Microsoft might have actually changed the color of the actual Natal housing that holds the device from black to white.

The unconfirmed decision to perhaps change the color of the housing leads to this question:  why would Microsoft do this? While there are a couple of reasons, it seems that there are simply more Xbox consoles in white than black; it is as simple as that. While some whispers we hear suggest that perhaps it will be available in both white and black, we doubt that this will be the case.

The news of a white Natal housing has been fueled by pictures that have surfaced showing a reviewer who is apparently testing a white version of the device rather than the black one that we have seen in the past. According to what we hear, the revisions to the housing (that make it look different from the black one that we have seen) have to do with the revisions made to Natal before it went into mass production build. Some suggest that the black Natal units were distributed to developers and used for demos; but recently, developers have started to receive updated Natal kits to work with, and they have been white in color.

What might be more of a surprise is the rumor that Natal might cost much more than expected. While we have heard that it was always Microsoft’s plan to keep the price of Natal to less than $100 USD, according to sources the MSRP could be closer to $200. While we have a hard time believing that this is the case, we just wanted to let you know what the rumors are out there. We still think that Microsoft will come in at a price that is less than $200 and Microsoft released a statement suggesting that you should not beleive anything that you read about the price. We think that just confirms that a $200 price is inaccurate.