But there are fortunes to be made in Mexico and India!

I don't know about "useless," but yeah. They need to get the price down for the separately sold HDD.

It's a pretty deep cut. For folks just interested in retail games, 200 dollars seems quite a good deal for the core system. The fall update will give that ability to install and run the games from a harddrive, but it remains to be seen if that ever becomes a game requirement, let alone a recommendation.

200 bucks for the xbox 360 catalog of software sounds very good indeed.

Most die after 4 to 6 months.

I'm still holding out for Jasper.

They also are quietly dropping the price of the 120 GB hard drive to the slightly less ridiculous price of $150. Still a stupid price, but a nice concession to those of us who need space for Rock Band 1 songs once Rock Band 2 drops.

Mine died after 11 months. So I guess the joke is off. Sometimes they die later. But they all eventually die.

My Elite has just passed 12 months without a whiff of trouble.

I actually recommended the Arcade to someone at work not long ago -- he was thinking about getting a current-gen console, and the Arcade is a total bargain (they dropped to $50 below the Wii's price here about a month ago, and at the time they were actually discounted another $50 at one retailer). The Core was terrible, but the Arcade at least gets you a wireless controller and enough save-game storage to start with, and since he was going to buy a $10 VGA cable off eBay and use it on a monitor, the lack of a bundled HD cable didn't bother him.

I didn't quite convince him to take the plunge, but it's only a matter of time

I personally am ho-hum about the announcement because it's the Arcade version. The confusing fractured skus continues to plague the 360, in my opinion. A $250 "Pro" system would be REALLY compelling. A $200 arcade system hits the magic price point. But I can imagine the bad PR when the buyer of said system realizes they have to buy a hard drive if they really want to do much of anything. Nevermind wireless. It's weird, but at $200 Microsoft is *almost* at parity with the PS3. Lower barrier to entry, but if you want wireless and a hard drive you're getting in the range of $400.

You're right, Malor. It's so loud. Spin the DVD drive less and the system sounds less like a Jet engine. Since buying a PS3 it's been interesting how I can compare these things. It's night and day. The 60GB PS3 makes noise, but a fraction of the 360. Especially when the disc is spinning. Having a hard drive be a given and some manner of installation/caching being an option would have made the 360 a much better system overall.

It's funny, owing a PS3. It becomes pretty clear (at least to me) that BC stuff aside, and Little Big Planet aside, the 360 is by far the superior console. I love my PS3 and will be holding onto it. Definitely. But it's way behind the 360 as a game machine. As a piece of hardware it's far superior. Blu-ray player, built in Wi-Fi. Quieter. It's just better.

Yet the 360 kills the PS3 when it comes to online and game selection. It's a strange generation, this one. If Sony had come in at a lower price point initially, I'm thoroughly convinced now that they would have seen better dev support and would have won this generation easily. I'm also thoroughly convinced that had Microsoft included a hard drive and Wi-Fi, that they too could have a much bigger handle on this generation.

I know people have had their RROD stories (I just got a replacement Xbox after 2.5 years of good service with my first) but has anyone had their HD's die? I really wish they would drop the price on the 120 gig drive to something more reasonable.

You? Missed the joke. He's not talking about the 360.

I'm on my second Elite, my first one's DVD drive died. I keep the thing in my TV cabinet, but keep the door open while it's in use. I've had this one for roughly 13 months now, with no false-positive red-rings, and only about 3 hard-locks while playing games, all different games. I think I've been largely lucky with this one, though, as it doesn't have the new heatsink they started using to try and keep red-rings to a minimum. This announcement is quite welcome, as I only have a little more than a year and seven months left on the 3-year-from-purchase-date red-ring warranty, and seven months for any other problem before I'm totally out of warranty. By then, buying the arcade as a total replacement will likely be a bargain compared to sending it off to Microsoft for repairs. So, I welcome this news, and hope it goes down again before then.

Comparing the 360's noise issues to the PS3 is kind-of a moot point for me, though. Neither has an advantage, because my projector, which sits directly above my head, makes plenty of fan noise itself. The 360 just blends in with it, and I don't really notice the difference with the PS3.

Are they selling it at the launch price? In the states, many times if you buy a Wii, they force you into a higher priced bundle with sh*t you do not want.

I have one small question, how many people who would buy those games do not currently have a Xbox 360 or PS3?

I just bought an Elite too, so I'm bringing my receipt back in the hopes that I can get my $50 back from Gamestop. The guy that sold it to me said I could.

Yep. I hated the "Core" and I hate this. The X360 is not $200, it's $300. No one who buys the $200 will be happy they didn't get the $300 version unless they decide they don't like the system at all. MS traded the certainty of a hard drive for a marketing bullet point that looks good in advertisements but only leads to disappointment.