One of my Microsoft Belgium sources has just sent me an email with some news about a future Xbox 360 rebranding revealed at a press event in Francorchamps, Belgium hours ago. (Earlier today? Late last night? Timezones confuse me.) According to him:
"The embargo just lifted on some news I got earlier. At an as of yet unknown date, the Core will be completely phased out and repackaged as the ‘Xbox Arcade: Just Play’ pack. It will come with 5 games (I assume Uno and Pac-Man are two since I believe I saw them on the box art shown), a 256 mb memory card, and will be priced at 279. I’m not 100% sure about this part, but my notes say it will have an HDMI exit, but no cable in the box."
I’m not sure if the price he gave is in Euros, dollars or some imaginary money I’ve never heard of, or if this will make it stateside at all, but I’m sure once we get towards more normal hours more information will start to trickle out. He’s also going to send us the slides from the presentation in a short while, so we’ll see if I can manage to be awake when those get here.
*UPDATE*
As promised, here’s an image from the slideshow showcasing the new Xbox Arcade, as well as the already-announced price cuts.
*Edelman has yet to respond to any emails asking whether or not they do want the images up. Since other sites have gone back to publishing them, we’ll follow suit until they contact me directly*
According to my source, they did mention that this "new" model would be a global thing, and with the recent changes of Xbox 360 prices in Europe, it wouldn’t be a shocker at all if this went for 279 in both Europe and the US.
In the meantime, who wants to let Microsoft Belgium know that they don’t need to make all of their presentation slides using MSPaint?
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