$130 Arcade? Fuck Yeah. A buddy of mine (PS3 owner) wants to jump in. I'll let him know that Wal-Mart is planning a $130 sale. Only problem is the hard drive. Expensive as hell. M$ needs to stop being greedy jerks with HDD pricing.

Hmm... I'm skeptical of that ad scan. Notice how it calls it the 360 Core. Microsoft dropped the core branding a while back, and checking both gamestop.ca and walmart.ca indicates that yes, the system is in fact called the Arcade in that region. So why would this old word suddenly come back?

The whole Core thing I think is just an honest mistake on Wal-Mart's part. I think they really mean Arcade but have confused it with the old Core name. Notice how it says that it includes a wireless controller (also pictured on the ad) and 256 MB of memory. The Core came with a wired controller and it didn't come with 256 mb. So yes that is indeed an Arcade. Though before you plan on buying it, you should check out the box yourself in-store.

Woah, i just hope it sells as hot cakes so may be MS decides to keep it in that price a little bit longer !

well its true. every single store has the same special. 130$ for a spanking new xbox. if i actually ever had time to even play all my untouched ps3 games, i'd definitely go pick one up.

256 mb of memory and Ethernet port INCLUDED POMG
360 better then PS3 Confirmed - Thanks Jason from Ontario!

Embarrassed to be Canadian reading that.

lol @ that ad.

These promotions ($70 off arcades for a week in Canada, and then bundling Forza 3 and ODST with the Elite at no extra charge for the spring) make sense given that the 360 needs something to give it a boost at this point. The PS3 offers Blu-Ray, the 360 doesn't. The PS3 offers free online, the 360 doesn't. The PS3 has integrated Wi-Fi, the 360 doesn't (not a big deal for the vast majority of gamers but some gamers have no choice but to use Wi-Fi sadly unless they want to set up a huge ass ethernet cable in the house).

That said, it's not smart for Microsoft to play the razors and blades game at this stage. They can play it more than Sony can (seeing as how Microsoft generates healthy profits year after year whereas the Sony corporation is in the red these days). But Microsoft's shareholders have other plans. They want to see returns on their whooping investments on the Xbox brand. The Xbox division is starting to generate profits quarter-to-quarter (xbox live gold subscriptions are a big part of that apparently) but if they lowered the hardware price and made online multiplayer free, they would forfeit those profits and on top of that lose even more money.

Hmm, I just saw ads for this in today's Futureshop and Zellers flyers. Though I wonder why it's just Canada.

Are there any decent deals for 360 hard drives? Already let the buddy know about the $130 Arcade but the 60 GB Starter Pack is $110 (and he has zero interest in Xbox Live so the 3 months Live gold card, headset and ethernet cord that comes with the hard drive are useless to him) and that's more than he's willing to spend. There is a 20 GB Starter for $60 but the 20 GB hard drive is a refurb ($60 for a 20 gb refurb? wtf M$? Seriously M$, get with the program. The hard drive pricing is out of whack. If your hard drive pricing were reasonable, that friend would have a 360 next to his PS3. M$ is dropping the ball on opportunities like this).

That said, to be fair, Microsoft is loss leading by selling the Arcade for only $130 and at the end of the day you can get what's essentially a 60 GB Pro for $240 Canadian. Fair enough. Perhaps it's unreasonable to sell the hard drives at regular market shares when you're getting an Arcade for so little. But at the same time, by charging such outrageous prices for hard drives, they're screwing over people who already own a 360. The only way to get a decent deal on a hard drive for 360 is if you buy a console bundle with that hard drive already included. But what if you already have the console? Then M$ tells you to stick it, pay $150 for a 120 GB hard drive. Sony on the other hand lets you use any compatible third-party 2.5" hard drive. When the next generation hits, xbox 360 owners are going to remember things like this (especially if Sony doesn't make the mistake of launching a $500-600 console next time).