The Italian-language static adverts and video appeared briefly on Italian website Console Tribe. Sleuthing by Joystiq discovered that the Microsofted-owned advertising company Atlas Solutions pushed the ads out.

The ads gained further credibility by boasting of support for Kinect, which at the time was not yet known to be the new name for Microsoft's Project Natal controller.

Microsoft began to sell 250GB hard drives separately in March this year at the price of $129.99, before which they were only available in select hardware bundles. A regular console model with a 250GB hard drive seems almost inevitable.

Competitor Sony launched its own revamped PlayStation 3 Slim in September 2009 with a larger hard drive and a slimline new look for $299.

Were Microsoft about to to announce such a revamp, it would almost certainly be during its E3 press conference this morning. We'll have our top newsmen reporting from there.