XBox 360 Pricecuts

[Chris Gohlke]

<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://kotaku.com/5045074/xbox-360-price-slashes-hit-us-on-sept-5' target='_blank'>http://kotaku.com/5045074/xbox-360-...it-us-on-sept-5</a><br /><br /></div><p><em>"You knew it was coming, but Microsoft has made it official: the Xbox 360 is officially going to drop to as low as $199 starting Friday, September 5 in the U.S. The three currently offered SKUs will get a price drop in North America, following multiple retail leaks and a similar pricing adjustment for the Japanese market. The new MSRP for the current line up is as follows. Xbox 360 Arcade - $199 Xbox 360 - $299 Xbox 360 Elite - $399"</em></p><p><img src="http://images.thoughtsmedia.com/resizer/thumbs/size/600/dht/auto/1220487451.usr10.jpg" border="1" /></p><p>While not a surprise, I think this a pretty good move by Microsoft going into the end of the year.&nbsp; The $199 price point is psycologically important in that it is cheaper than the Wii, which STILL might be in short supply this holiday season.</p>

[Sven Johannsen]

Anyone know if you can use an Arcade as a Media Center Extender? Would make it the cheapest one around...with a DVD player. Shame that the Extender manufactureres think that they should charge as much as a cheap laptop for these things, and a further shame that MS hasn't produced a software extender to run on their OS.

[Chris Gohlke]

I would assume it would. Nothing I've ever read has shown a caveat for not being able to use it as a front end for WMC.

I've actually been thinking the same thing to get a second for the bedroom. But I'd probably buy a new one with HDMI for the living room and move the old one.

[fyiguy]

Anyone know if you can use an Arcade as a Media Center Extender? Would make it the cheapest one around...with a DVD player. Shame that the Extender manufactureres think that they should charge as much as a cheap laptop for these things, and a further shame that MS hasn't produced a software extender to run on their OS.

Yes, you can. I just picked one up after using some Amex gift certificates that were so old they were falling apart. The Arcade has the HDMI connector and is SO MUCH quieter than my Xbox 360 Original, mainly the Optical drive which sounds like a vacuum cleaner revving up. I picked it up a Circuit City which had a $19 1600 points card thrown in. It also comes with a wireless controller and a composite cable, so I may even bring it on long business trips with hotels that have only basic video connectors. My $3 Monoprice (http://www.monoprice.com) HDMI cable worked fine with it.

I switched out my old 360 with the Arcade in my home theater, just popped off the hard drive, ran the update, downloaded my Xbox Live profile and I was back in business. The old one is now in my bedroom as a Media Center Extender and game machine so when my family takes it over and I can get a few minutes of gaming in as well as when I hit the ole Elliptical trainer.

Circuit City also had a Linksys Media Center Extender (one of the new ones) for $149 (manager price cut) and it didn't even have a DVD drive nor any gaming capability. They also had an MSN TV 2.0 for $199. The 360 was the much better deal and I may purchase another hard drive probably 120GB off of eBay for the old one or via another method, but it works great with Media Center, now only if it supported DVD streaming, at least NetFlix support is coming this fall. And it already works with vmcNetflix (http://myweb.cableone.net/eluttmann04/projects/vmcNetFlix/default.htm) now via Media Center.

It is a really good buy and value for the money for someone looking to get an affordable extender and to boot you get a gaming machine with some free games.:D