I wouldn't count on any price drops, unless it's a store exclusive offer from a retailer because of Christmas or Boxing day or New Years or something else.

The 360 premium and Elites are in short supply, many major retailers throughout North America and probably Europe are either very low on inventory or out of inventory. Here in the States, Best Buy, Circuit City, Amazon, Gamestop, they are all battling to keep the console in stock, most of them are out of stock on both models on thier websites and in many stores, so there just isn't enough inventory to make any big push with another sale.

The corporate price drop was only started a few months back, and on top of that, they just threw in the 2 free game Holiday bundles within the last 2 months, and it's a limited quantity sale, when they are gone, they are gone. With both of those two big sale pushing discounts going, I would be shocked if there were too many further sales around the holidays.

It's a retarded plan is the problem. I mean if your stuffed with cash, then fine,(although if you are, then the RRoD shouldn't be an issue, just go buy a new one)but other than that, it's a moronic idea.

So if someone buys a 360 and 6 or 7months later, it fails, they should just trade it in to a Gamestop for peanuts? Take a 280 - 500 dollar investment depending on which model you bought, and liquidate it for 100 - 140 bucks after only 7 months, because your too damned impatient to wait a few weeks?

So if your doing that and going for a PS3, then you might as well just get rid of your games while your at it. So take in 60 dollar games and walk out with 10 - 20 dollars for each one, even if you just bougth that game brand new 2 months ago?

So lets say you bought a new Elite at Launch, and it failed nowand you have 10 or 12 games or more, and some accessories, you take all that stuff that you've thrown down almost 1,500 bucks for in total over just the last 7 or 8 months, and you walk into a gamestop and they give you 450 -550 bucks or so for it, and you think that's even remotely a sane idea how?

Piss away your money if you want, but there are way better solutions to the problem than this hairbrained crap.

With the experience it offers, gameplay, controller, graphics, quality of the games, Xbox Live experience, exclusive games, all that stuff, I'm thrilled with it, I couldn't be happier, there is very little I can fault with almost all of those catagories.

However, I am very displeased with the consoles reliablity and it's build quality in general. I really dislike the noise and heat that the console puts out, if your sitting 25 feet away and have the surround sound cranked up, it's fine, but if your in a smaller room and sitting close to it with normal TV volume levels, it's to the point where it does devalue to a certain extent the experience. Not by enough to overall detract alot from the system, but still, it's more than it should be.

I don't like the fact that I have to go out of my way to try and preserve the system's normal operating requirements. I've gone to extremes, to build a stand and a airflow rig just to get the system down to a decent heat output level and not have the disc hot to the touch when I take it out. It also took some work to incorporate all this without it being an eyesore or being attached to the 360 like the horrible problem creating intercooler is. People shouldn't have to work at it and run through a checklist just to get thier 360 setup properly before they start gaming.

I wouldn't even mind all this so much if the console was reliable with this effort, but it still isn't. My launch console suffered RRoD twice, I finally bought a new premium in July of 06, it had a HDD failure and needed to be replaced, after that, it had a Hitachi disc drive failure. I decided to upgrade to an Elite when they launched on April. after only 7 months, it also suffered Hitachi drive failure and now because Microsoft tells me because of certain circumstances it would be a 6 - 10 week repair turnaround, and Best Buy tells me they are out of stock of Elites and will not be able to honor my PRP until a few weeks after the holidays, I'm stuck without a console, unless I buy a replacement, which I'm not willing to do.

I've got a temperature controlled home at 68 degrees F, I have an air filtration system in the house, so there is little to no dust, and I've gone to extremes to help the console out on top of that, and still I have suffered repeated hardware failures of varrying components. That really frustrates me.

Having an extensive game collection of great games, isn't worth a penny if the hardware is always failing and those games cannot be played. I enjoyed the hell out of Xbox 1, and when it works I love my 360. I'll hopefully track down a Falcon when I replace my broken Elite, and if that fails on me, I'll wait for the rumored Jasper units late next year or in 2009, but if by then I cannot own a reliable console, I'll be changing my tune from saying yes I am happy with my 360, toa very negative **** No I'm not happy with the console.

Most of that info is either already essentially confirmed or just the obvious trend of console development. Dean Takahashi among others have all but confirmed there is a new MB in the works called Jasper that will bring 65nm GPUs and 45nm CPUs in either late 2008 or early 2009, it would not be shocking at all if they upped the HDD size on the Premium to 40 gigs since there is now so much content and so many games out there with Demos and DLC, and anyone upgrading or in need of a new console will have had 3 years by then to accumulate stuff on their console.

The Wifi is questionable, but if they throw it in, fine. The Arcade going by by isn't necessarily a huge thing either, I think it was a good idea to get in a cheaper core with more value for this holiday season, and sell off a bunch of old stock and older parts on the cheaper console, then when they can afford to drop the premium down to at or nearly at the current price of the Arcade, maybe they don't see a need for the Arcade anymore, just write it off as a limited edition. There are hundreds of those things sitting in most stores, while the Pros are either almost gone or sold out, and the Elite's are almost non existant after the Holiday rush.Maybe the Arcades are not selling very well,so why not discontinue them then.It's a logical move that makes some sense.

The price cut is beyond obvious, it will happen, and it always was going to happen, it was just a matter of when. MS has been saying for over a year now that they believe they need to get the console cost down to around $199 to ultimately hit the sweet spot.

The biggest thing I hope is true, is that news that they plan to improve the DVD drives, because to me, they are the single biggest issue, they have failed on me twicenow, without any overheating or hardware RRoD issues, and they are also the single biggest thing that makes the 360 so damned loud. I would welcome any reliablity and noise reduction efforts on that front.

I think mgs4 will be 30-35 hours hopefully, cuz of the blueray. redskins2156

You don't own a PS3 yet do you? Because if you did, you should have gotten over this fanboy crap notion that Blu Ray (Not Blue Ray) has even the tiniest timpact towards game length. High Definition sound and FMV cutscenes are what take up huge amounts of space on a disc, anything uncompressed or of lesser compression aka better quality, takes up huge amounts of space, and that's what Blu Ray is about.

Heavenly Sword, Lair, and Uncharted are all 3 games that supposedly wouldn't come close to fitting on a DVD and take full advantage and need the space available on a 50g Blu Ray, but yet not a one of them comes even close to 10 hours in gameplay length, well Lair is around 10, if you can stand playing it that long. But Uncharted and HS are 6 - 8. I'm not saying they are not great games, but they are short and use up a lot of data space on the disc.

BD is about opening up the quality and presentation value of a game, and several games have shown the fruits of that. However not one game yet has shown us any sign that BD is going to have any impact on actual game length.

If your basing your estimate on MGS 4s length because of BD, your in for a shock when it comes out. Plus, not one game in the series has ever been more than a 15 hour experience, despite some of you people claiming 20 or 25 hours, maybe you took a nap in the middle of it and played on super hard and sucked at it, but none of the games are that long. I promise you that there is absolutely no chance in hell that MGS 4 is anywhere near 30 - 40 hours. If it's 15 to 20, it will be fantastic and a great end to the series.

Hands down the best racing game on the 360 is Forza 2, but it's more of a simulation game like Gran Turismo, and it sounds like you want some tacky arcade style game, which is fine.

Burnout Paradise should be your pick then, and take a look at PGR 4, and if you like drifting on dirt, then look at DiRT.

I think you see that if you either bring Alenko or Williams and Garrus to Chora's Den to meet Hal? or whatever that sh*tbag ex C-Sec officer's name was.g5velocity

No it doesn't, and the part with the asari is in Flux, not Chora's Den which is where you meet the C-sec drunk.

If you look at the E3 06 and the X06 stuff, which is the two large walkthrough videos, almost none of that stuff actually made it into the game. The grenades doen't work the same as they did in those videos, none of the scripted dialogue is the same, in fact that video used the old Ashley.

The also make a big deal out of Caliston (spelling?) and exploring it, when in fact, Caliston does not appear in the game at all. Although it looks like based on the main battle from the end of that video, that they changed Caliston to Therum.

Anyway, none of it made it into the game, so I guess we will never know what they intended to do with that stuff.

It really depends, on what is wrong with your console, whether they repair it or replace it, where you are located in relation to what service center your shipping it out to, all that stuff. Some people have claimed to get thiers back in as little as 4 or 5 days, Others have taken close to 10 weeks.

In general a 2 - 5 week elapse is common between the time you call them up and the time you get your fixed or replaced console back. With the Holidays, it may be worse now, I don't know.

Online

For my net i have cable and a router that sometimes screws up, the speed on speed test was like 5mb, so is that good enough and shouild i go wired or wireless?

Controllers

Should i get wired/wireless and sixasis or the rumble version?

Where can i get a headset and what other add-ons should i get - KB + Mouse?

Scratches

What can i do to keep the PS3 clean - use a cloth to touch it :p, puit it on a cloth?

Is there a polish i can use to keep it shiny :D?

Does it come with a stand?

And what top 10 games should i get (including GTA IV :P)?

Thank you for reading

jasopan

Yes, 5 mbs is plenty fast, and if you don't mind the wires, go with a wired connection, it's usually much more stable and reliable than a wireless connection when it comes to gaming. Even if your PS3 is right next to your wireless router.

There is no wired controller for the PS3. Unless you live in Japan or your willing to import it, there is no US or EUversion of the Dualshock 3 yet. You can import one from Playasia orother sites though. If your spending the money, might as well buy the DS 3, because the SIXAXIS is just the DS 3 without rumble, otherwise they areprimarily the same.

You can use any compatible Bluetooth headset which can be purchased at 1000s of retailers across the globe. A mouse and keyboard is always a good invesment, but that's all your call.

What you want to do, isget yourself an HDTV cleaning cloth, and when you need to dust or wipe the PS3, do it gently, and you can also use an HDTV approved cleaning solution. I've found if youtreat the PS3 surface like a HDTV screen or case, they have similar tolerances for scratches and similar care requirements.

It does not come with a stand, nor to my knowledge is there an official one, because the PS3 does not require a stand, eitherway you want to put it, it's stable.

Heavenely Sword, Ratchet and Clank, Killzone 2, MGS 4, GTA 4, Uncharted Drakes Fortune, Little Big Planet, Resistance 1 and next year 2, Unreal Tournament 3. Those are some of the games you want and some you want to look out for into next year.