So I was amused to see an Engadget story today about what appears to be a slimmer new Xbox 360 in the background of a photo I took of a Microsoft Arc Mouse. (I was actually just trying to show how small the mouse was, but whatever.) Anyways, here it is...

We received an interesting tip that we thought we'd share with the group. Windows expert and all-around bon vivant Paul Thurrott recently previewed Microsoft's new Arc mouse on his personal blog, detailing the device with a handful of photos. In the final shot of the series, what appear to be two Xboxes side-by-side can be seen in the lower right-hand corner... but one of those consoles looks thinner than the other. The appearance of what might be a slimmer Xbox 360 has (needless to say) sparked a debate amongst our editors here. Some say it's nothing -- a matter of angle -- while others argue that this could be just the scenario in which you'd see a leak of a new form factor. Either way, you can't simply brush off the differences here, and a little Photoshop matching on our end proved that these edges are decidedly different in angle. So we put it to the Engadget reader: is this a sign of things to come, or just our imaginations running wild?

Oh, I wish this were a slimmer Xbox 360, I really do. But it isn’t, sorry. And I can prove it, since nothing has changed down on the floor of my office since I took that original photo (including the MU, which is still sitting on top of my red-ringed 360). Here are the same two Xbox 360s from a different angle: