It’s official — the 360 is the first of the current consoles to fall “under” $200 in the U.S.A.  For $199.99, fifty dollars less than usual, you can pick up the XBox 360 Arcade bundle, which features five popular XBLA titles, the core system, one wireless controller, and a memory unit.    For $299.99, again dropping by fifty dollars, the XBox 360 “standard” console can be had, which comes with only one pre-loaded arcade game (Hexic, but it’s a dandy), controller, and a 60 gig hard-drive — perfect for all of your game saves and quite a bit of DLC.  Finally, for the new low price of $399.99, you can grab the XBox 360 Elite, which is the same as the standard but comes in black, features a massive 120 gig HD (great if you like downloading movies and television programs), and also comes with a headset and an HDMI cable.

With this news, as well as the upcoming Netflix availability and redesigns to eliminate the dreaded Red Ring of Death, Microsoft is in prime position to to sell a lot of consoles and make a lot of money.  Because they really, really like money.

Source:  XBox.com

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4 Comments »

1. 
   Devin de Gruyl
   September 4, 2008 at 7:40 pm

   I was actually considering a 360 anyway, based on some of the games on the way for it; I think this may have finally tipped the scales in its favor.

   [Reply]

   Shawn M. Reply:
   September 4th, 2008 at 10:23 pm

   Cool. I’d suggest getting the Arcade — the five arcade titles are all good on their own (Pac Man C.E., Feeding Frenzy, Luxor 2, Uno, and Boom Boom Rocket), and the memory unit is big enough to hold plenty of game saves and a few extra Arcade titles. If you want a hard drive, which is good if you think you’ll download quite a few things (such as Rock Band songs, in my case), you’ll want a hard drive. Still, get the Arcade, and you can pick up a new, or even used, hard drive for cheaper than upgrading to the other packages.

   Just remember, even though the consoles are getting cheaper, we still have to pay for Live and the opportunity to play online — $50 a year, which isn’t too bad when you look at it being a tad over $4 a month.

   [Reply]

2. 
   Shawn M.
   September 7, 2008 at 5:01 pm

   I just need to point out an edit, the Hard Drive included in the $299 package is a 60 gig, not a 20 gig as I mentioned. Turns out it’s an even better deal than I thought.

   [Reply]

   Devin de Gruyl Reply:
   September 8th, 2008 at 11:58 am

   Especially since my pricing reveals that a 20GB HD is $99 - so the 360 Arcade + 20GB HD combo costs just as much as the “standard” 360. Of course, you do get the five XBLA games with the Arcade package, but even so…

   [Reply]

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