Allright, so I noticed a lot of people have been complaining about the elites not coming with HDMI cables....really? You cannot be serious! Not when a person can get an HDMI cable (which has been proven to work just as well as $50.00 cables by C-NET and other top electronics websites) off of Amazon for under $3.00...Why is it people complain about not including an HDMI cable, but never complained about MS not supplying an optical audio cable for models with component video cables? I realize MS dropped the HDMI cable that it once supplied, but let's be realistic, it helped drop the price of the console. 

So what do you guys think? why is it OK not to include one type of cable, and not the other?

there 60p on amazon.co.uk (~$1)

I care.. but i dont feel like explaining why. It should be obvious.

More people use hdmi cables than optical cables, so people don't really care about it that much.

My old Elite (Falcon) came with an hdmi cable, component cables and the breakout box for the optical audio out. (My MW2 360 didn't come with that extra stuff though). Though I don't really use it as I just have it hooked up to my tv via hdmi and I use the optical out from the tv to my surround sound system. It's just easier as I can do the same thing with my ps3 and wii as well.

For most people using the component audio or audio via hdmi is just fine.

there is actually no real point to this thread... everyone here knows this or should...

Not that i rly care but if microsoft did care about their customes then they would spend the extra $3 and include them

I would rather they didn't hand out cables to people that didn't need them and hence save some money towards R&D and also help the environment a little.  It's rather wasteful giving out cables that might not be needed, its a better policy for stores to make sure that when a customer buys a product they have all they need.

Wierd. My PS3 slim didn't come with an HDMI cable and yet I didn't hear anybody complain about the matter.

PS3's (both phat and slim) have never come with hdmi cables, only the cheapest rca cables (red/white/yellow one). People stopped complaining about PS3's lack of an HD capable cable a long time ago.

Yes, it's incredibly stupid not to include a HDMI cable with the 360 or PS3. HD and graphical quality is a big part of these consoles' philosophy, and given that it costs peanuts...

I wonder if retailers are partly to blame. They make tons of money on overpriced HDMI cables, maybe they pressured MS/Sony not to include HDMI cables.