Microsoft Announces New 360 Bundle Packs

Starting at the end of this month, you'll be able to get a little more for your dollar when buying a new Xbox 360. Gamasutra is reporting that Micrsoft has unveiled bundle pack versions of the Elite and standard consoles. The $449.99 Xbox 360 Elite and the standard $349.99 Xbox will now both come with packed-in game titles: Forza Motorsport 2 and Marvel Ultimate Alliance. "Microsoft says both bundles will be available by the end of October and throughout the holidays. The retail packaging bears the company's new model-specific slogans, with the Elite tagged 'Go Big', and the standard 'Go Pro'. On October 3rd, various now-deleted online retail listings showed the existence of a third pack, the $279.99 'Arcade' bundle, which bore all similar markings as the new models, and was tagged 'Go Play' ... As yet, Microsoft has not officially announced the bundle, but all signs point to its imminent arrival."

Baffled

[wizzard2k]

I'm still baffled why the 360 Halo Edition does not come bundled with the game.

Did they fix their console yet?

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Seriously, it has a known, fatal design flaw. Why doesn't anybody but me see how awful this is? You fix that, and give me some way to guarantee that I will receive a fixed version of the console, and maybe I'll consider buying. Until then, it'd be pretty fucking stupid to spend hundreds of dollars on something that might become a paperweight after a month. I just don't get why MS didn't jump all over this and fix it immediately and issue a big press release about how awesome they were and so on.

Re:HALO 3

[EasyT]

I bet if they packed Halo 3 in with it (and of course charged a slightly higher price) they'd unload a pile of systems at a decent enough profit.

While I share your opinion that their currently bundled games themselves aren't very compelling, but I doubt we'll see a Halo 3 pack-in because I suspect Microsoft isn't terribly worried about moving systems this Christmas season. Wii's are still seeing supply fall short of demand and PS3 systems have fewer games at a higher price. And Halo 3 (and Mass Effect and other soon-to-be-released titles) will move plenty of systems even being sold separately. The system is starting to move under its own momentum.

By NOT packing in Halo 3, they'll still sell lots of units and they'll additionally rake in tons of cash by selling Halo 3 separately. And making loads of cash and perhaps finally showing that Microsoft's game division is profitable sounds like a pretty good strategy.

Just my uninformed 2 cents.

Re:Did they fix their console yet?

[jtroutman]

Just my opinion, but I'd say code that's executable from the stack and internal code addresses that aren't randomized at boot time qualify, especially since those can't be fixed through patches. That's what lead to the first hack [itbusinessedge.com] and could spell more problems.

Re:Did they fix their console yet?

[AbRASiON]

The overheating issues are occuring on far far far more than 3% of units, I've seen results from several sources at least 5 forum polls at different sites, EB store employees tallying up a sold / return ratio, journolists (sp?) reporting how many have failed at their offices etc.

The chaps at UPS actually know what the Xbox is when returning it bwefore you return it, based on the box you bring it in with..... the failure rate is rumoured to be as high as 30% - I'd be very comfortable believing 15% for sure.

The 3 year warranty for the RROD is absoloutely FUCKING useless as far as I and several console gamers are concerned.
A>I don't want to be without my console for 2-6 weeks multiple times over the course of 3 years.
B>Secondly due to DRM you have to sign in to Xbox live to be able to play your downloaded Xbox games because they are signed to the hardware of your DEAD console see : http://brokenxblm.blogspot.com/ [blogspot.com]
C>Why should I support a company releasing shit hardware, can't they get their act together, it's been 2 fucking years!
and finally and I believe by far most importantly,..
D>3 Years? big fucking deal, there's still gamers playing 5 year old PS2's, 8 year old PS1's, 10 year old N64's and older, sure some old hardware breaks down, I won't deny that but at least you have a chance,...... why should I or anyone else purchase a product which is actually LIKELY to break down, forcing me to have to buy a new one in 3.01 years time or 4 years etc?
No! I'm enjoying cheap Xbox 1 and PS2 games and I plan to keep enjoying them, I'd like to do the same with a 360, maybe pull it out in 4 or 5 years to play Gears of war etc,.....so in that case, I can't see waiting for a more reliable edition being a bad thing.

Also there's rumours there's a fixed model out, the die appears to be approximately 15% smaller, which doesn't correlate with 90nm to 65nm but no one knows for sure, so we're waiting for more info - but either way the thing is still bloody noisy.

Nope, I'm waiting for confirmation on forums like Xbox-scene.com that there's a more reliable one out there in the wild.