Rumour – 360 Slim on the way

Thats not an Xbox, its a Helicopter!

I smell RROD all over again …..

Well its a pretty smart move from Microsoft…if it is true. Although, let’s call it what it is, a blatent copy of Sony’s idea.

Should be pretty good with a GPU style cooler. Far better cooling solution, and far quieter too.

here we go: slim, natal, and natal based partygame bundle

Let’s hope they put a half-decent DVD drive in this time around, then. 90% of the machine noise comes from that.

How many XBox SKU’s are there now out of interest? Does the Arcade still exist?

Probably launch with Natal.

@Redh3lix: Right now it’s the elite and the arcade, with the elite coming in two models (120gb as standard / 250gb bundled with certain games).

If it’s only a smaller 360 with the same failure rate and no Natal then I’m not interested.

If that is genuine it’s got a few extra connector blocks at the back. Seems likely the extra ports are where Microsoft have split the connectors into separate blocks. That way they can be arranged horizontally reducing the vertical space they use and allow the system to be slimmer.

There’s no hard disk connector on top of the motherboard, which could suggest this is fake, but it could also mean MS plan to bundle an internal HDD or they have redesigned and moved the connector elsewhere that I can’t see.

It also seems to be missing the front memory card ports, but the two USB slots are still there, albeit arranged horizontally like the rear ports.

Obviously they’re just using a stock PC cooler at the moment, it will be interesting to see what sort of cooling the final system needs. That will be the biggest decider of the final system’s thickness, and I would expect MS will want it to be thinner than the PS3 if possible.

I think making the HDD internal would be a mistake, unless a further external could then be added later.

They could have the HDD internal and still sell them at retail for way beyond what they cost. They just need some sort of slot based system with whatever proprietary connector they can come up with.

Or they could just use the PS3 system (which seems unlikely given they’d still want to make money on the hard drives).

I want them to shut off RROD thing. Then i will buy Xbox 360 + price cut will be great.

I still think, to make a Sony’s slim stuff is a RIP OFF. Oh well atleast they will have better hardware. I hope.

This is pretty real looking, as for the hdd ,there is two sata ports on the top left which suggests the hdd may be internal.only one of those ports are present in the normal model for the dvd drive.Also its square which gives you an idea of the size,imagine what your 360 looks like square and thats probrably the size,im calling it now,bundled with 500gb internal to get one up on ps3

They already fixed the RROD thing in the later 360 models, surely? The failure rate is a fraction of what it used to be. Although perhaps that’s not saying much, given how high the failure rate used to be?

Update from Microsoft. SURPRISE!

@Blerk …… exactly what I was going to say.

The failure rates of the initial models (Zephyr, etc) were monstrously high (can anyone say 99.9%) ….. that current Jasper failure-rates would surely appear to be low.

Though a 360-Slim accepting regular 2.5″ SATA HDD’s will surely be great news.

This is the first time I(tipped kotaku about the Chinese messageboard) contribute to VG247 in some way, cheers

Hmmmm…at a decent price and if RRoD issue resolved, I might have to get back on board the Microsoft train…

Definitley a smart move from a marketing perspective.

I bet if this is true, MS must be busy testing a thousand new models 24/7 in a giant oven. If they fail to rid RROD this time I really don’t know what to say.

They got rid of it already! It’s gone! The failure rate of ‘new’ machines has been relatively normal for well over a year!

Where’s Psycho and his GAF thread?

What they need is to reduce the price. New skus and redesigns are nice, but if the prices remains at 300, then it is a mistake.

Falcon (and more so Jasper) are okay, I don’t think their failure rate is anything above 2004-05 PS2s (versions 4,5).

Where’s Psycho and his GAF thread?

I’m not allowed to post about it. People accuse me of making pie charts to defend the 360 failure rate.

back off xbots!

I don’t think the RROd problem is gone completely…it’s still there as it used to be,but since they added the optional install chances are less for RROD than before.If the 360 didn’t have the install option (which is kind of safe in a way)the problem would persist in the same manner as before

I will die laughing if anyones 360 slim RRODs.

Update from GAF, but without any of PT’s charts.

Ok, so what’s a fair pricepoint? I’d drop $200 easily.

So much for that story, then!

What? No, Cullen you are reading the GAF thread wrong, it’s saying that “Intel Clarkdale PC *** integrated graphics” has nothing to do with 360, any reference to it was an error on Kotaku’s part(they’ve updated the article since), but the mobo in question is likely legit.

Yeah Kotaku fail on basic knowledge of 360 hardware. The motherboard itself is probably legit.

Come in update number 3…

Yeah, MS is “ripping off” and “copying” Sony’s idea. Sony conceived the idea for slimmed down rereleases of consoles shortly after they invented videogames in 1996.

NES Slim

SNES Slim

Sony would go on to invent the Final Fantasy franchise in 1997.

Maybe this is the REAL reason why Microsoft kept bragging about this year being the “year of the 360″!

I guess E3 will tell us shortly…

I always wanted those slim SNES and SEGA3 systems if anyone knows where I can pick them up fairly new I’ll be glad to award them a finders fee.

Always good for a laugh:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pFlcqWQVVuU

AHHHHHHHHHHHH I love when kids open up presents to be so over excited about video game consoles….it brings so much joy to my heart.

I would have loved to seen a slim N64 and Gamecube though.