Rumor: Xbox 360’s New 60GB Model

The latest and greatest rumor on the Net brings back old rumors and spreads them with new rumors. The Xbox 360 will be getting a price drop on their 20GB model because they’re going to release a new 60GB model to replace it.

So, in essence, the price drop is just to move consoles off the shelves to make room for one of greater disk capacity. With all these Rock Band style games arriving, each with full song downloadable content (DLC), we’re going to need bigger disks! However, we don’t all want to invest in the 120GB Xbox 360.

Ars Technica says this information comes from a reliable source. Reliable source or common sense? The idea of dropping the Xbox 360 Pro down to a price that’s only USD $20.00 away from their lower model seems a bit rediculous if the original rumor is considered true. DLC is growing, disk capacity is becoming a bigger issue and finding manufacturers to build older 20GB disks is going to get tougher as months tick by.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Related Post

Sony’s Software Development Beta ProjectsSony’s Software Development Beta Projects

It seems we’ve seen a lot of great concepts from Sony for their PlayStation 3 product line but very little has managed to hit the software virtual shelves. We’ve heard of Sony’s Afrika for the PS3 back at E3 in 2006 and we’re looking at it for 2008’s holiday lineup.

We’ve heard about Sony Home for years as well, but that’s now in some type of beta. It was supposed to be an open beta but that didn’t seem to work out and now it’s closed beta only. Recently they pushed out a firmware update that bricked PlayStation 3 consoles or at least screwed up many of them in varying levels.

Are they just really bad at software development and road map predictions? As a hardware development company they’ve put out some hardcore products, stone cold stable in terms of design and efficiency from the Walk Man to the PS3. Their products are practical in design, for the most part, fairly pretty, stable and function as designed. Yet they come up short on software time and time again.

One of the contributors at 2old2play had some things to say about Sony’s development efforts:

“Having worked at Sony as a Creative Designer two years ago, it doesn’t surprise me that they have still yet to release Home. While there, I was working on their Station Launcher application which was supposed to be released in late 2006. However, the Launcher app is still only in Beta to this day.” (2old2play.com)

In many ways their the anti-Microsoft in their approach and commitments. While Microsoft ships hardware that has what must be a 60% failure rate Sony ships hardware which works fairly well. On the flip side, Microsoft publishes a large quantity of software for all their products and has done very well in the business. Nobody can say it’s 100% perfect but it tends to get better with age or, at least, grow on you.

(more…)

XBLA’s Braid Needs More SalesXBLA’s Braid Needs More Sales

XBLA offers great opportunities for the indy developer but everything comes at a price. Over the last three years Braid‘s developer Jonathan Blow spent a reported $180,000 to create the popular Braid title on Xbox Live. He’s going to need a lot more sales before he can celebrate the highly valued, highly reviewed title.

The Independent Games Festival was kind to him, giving him the “Innovation in Game Design” back in 2006, since then he’s put his money where is mouth is; his own money. There are good times and bad times when you’re discovering your dreams. The reviews surely made him feel great about the work he has done over the last three years but a review won’t pay the bills.

It may be a hard road ahead for Jonathan, hopefully at least breaking even on the project. Although he may not look back at the game as a financial success we can only imagine he’ll have a lot easier time getting funding or publishing for his next title, if that’s the path he chooses.

(Thanks, Kotaku)

Tales of Vesperia: Xbox 360 Outsells PS3 In JapanTales of Vesperia: Xbox 360 Outsells PS3 In Japan

Sony’s been talking about how they’ve overtaken the Xbox 360 here in the States, perhaps this is because Microsoft shifted their attention to pwning them in Japan? Xbox 360 sold 25,000 units to PlayStation 3‘s minor 9,673 units according to Edge Online, that’s 2.5 times more if you’re into that math thing.

Seriously though, Microsoft didn’t really shift any effort, they just got a Japanese style game called Tales of Vesperia from Namco Bandai. Go figure, when a Japanese focused game arrives for a console Japanese gamer will go out and buy it.

The big barrier to the 360 in Japan is the games and their contents. Microsoft is in tune with the needs and demands of the United States gamers, it usually involves FPS titles and excessive killing. Japanese gamers are not exactly huge FPS fans, we’ve seen the Asian community dominate in RTS style games (Starcraft is a great example) and they’ve always had interest in MMO’s, especially micro-transaction based games and we all know that’s the land of Final Fantasy. Is it so surprising the Xbox 360 moves off Japanese shelves when they have a game or two the gamers actually want to play?

This is only partly Microsoft’s fault, Microsoft doesn’t specialize in Japanese games anymore than Square Enix excels at western style games. The big difference? Square Enix doesn’t manufacturer its own console hardware. It is Microsoft’s console and they should have an interest in making games the Japanese people will like, thankfully Namco Bandai came through for them this time!