XBOX 360 Pricing Announced.

Microsoft has officially announced the pricing plan for the release of the XBOX 360 next gen system. The system is set for a Holiday 2005 release and will be available in 2 configurations. There will be a "Core System" release that will be priced at $299.99 and consist of the base console and 1 wired controller. That's about as bare boned as you can get. The second configuration is being called the "Premium Package" and will be priced at $399.99. This may sound like a lot, but for the extra $100.00 you are getting over $250.00 worth of accessories over the Core system. In the Premium package you get the 20GB hard drive,1 wireless controller,XBOX live headset,"chill" white faceplate,metallic detailing,component HD-AV cable,Ethernet cable and a wireless media remote control.

One thing that stands out is that the Core system has no hard drive, which means no storage. How will you be able to save games? The system would have to have some small internal flash memory or you are forced to buy the $39.99 64 MB memory unit. Also when the unit was shown at E3 it was being toted for its hard drive and wireless controller which led many to believe this would be the base configuration, so a lot of people will be slightly upset by this news. This is also surprising because Microsoft has always stated how beneficial the hard drive is to game play. So is this because they cannot afford to sell the unit as it was originally presented, or are they just trying to make more money off the product by making you have to by the Premium set to have everything you need. And with Microsofts lock-down on on all 3rd party accessories, they will have total control of the market. Another key point is that it appears the the base system will not be backwards compatible due to the fact that the hard drive is needed to optimize the games from the original system. It is going to be very interesting to see how much more changes by the release date.