Interesting prediction. I wonder why MS would do away with a revenue stream in ridding themselves of a proprietary HDD in favour of letting people use any USB external memory device.

I'm guessing a Slim Elite will come either with a built in HDD or a proprietray USB HDD that has the current std memory capacities (120Gig / 250Gig).

I'm also thinking that perhaps MS will hold on to that proprietary HDD market by only giving >32Gig memory cdapacity to people who buy the MS HDD. If you buy an after market USB HDD you might remain limited to 32 Gig (at any one time).

Just wondering if there's more than one Selnor on VGC, or is the thread title missing an apostrophe?

Oh.. your group of friends did this and that, well nuff said, obviously atleast 60% of exsisting owners repurchased a PS3 with less features. Price and marketing had nothing to do with it, they just wanted a console with matte finish for 300 bucks :))))

"me and all my friends" isnt a valid argument, because "me and all My friends" didnt purchase a slim.

The "slim effect" was soley due to a pricedrop and good games, together with a more agressive marketing. Some will purchase a "slim" for the looks of it, but its not going to help outsell the PS3 by 100k a week just because of pretty looks. "Its whats inside that counts" lol :D

I still have my fat PS3. and honestly if i were microsoft i would keep the 360 the same and just figure out how to make the powerbrick internal. I mean they basically used an existing pc case which im sure is as cheap to make as it gets. just put the brick inside please.

Its not a significant revenue stream and its probably worth more to them to reposition the Arcade as an even more viable hardware SKU because for a reasonable number of people in makes the Arcade viable as a console. In addition to this they'd probably gain more in revenue for their Live services than they would ever lose from some few HDD sales lost. Its effectively a hardware pricecut for the proportion of the market who want some but not much download capabilities.

Maybe 50-60% on the week Slim was launched, and for a week or 2 after that. But yeah, that's certainly not going to be anywhere near the long term %. And it won't be for a facelifted 360 either.

i hope the 360 slim does come out, that means more slimming down for the ps3, the better competition, the better the games. and that is just what it is all bout ^_^

Perhaps not, but MS seems to like keeping hold of these things by creating proprietary products either with HW designs or middleware restrictions that prevent widespread use of 3rd party products that are capable of exactly the same functionality. Hence their steps to prevent people pulling the supplied HDD out of their proprietary HDD case and replacing it with a bigger one.

It just seems to go against MSs general philosophy of wanting to stay in control of HW to allow for [potentialy] unlimited external HDD memory through anything other than a proprietary MS HDD. For people wanting to get better functionality on their Arcade giving them freedom up to 32Gig is all they need. After that it's consistent with the MS modus operandi to put proprietary controls on their customers. MS and retailers should be able to convince most people to buy one proprietary MS 120 or 250 HDD than multiple 16gig  3rd party devices.

And a profitable revenue stream is a profitable revenue stream. Why hand any profits over to other companies if you can keep them to yourself?

maybe the slim will have a built in hard drive?

i dont think any 360 owner really cares about a smaller 360, if they drop the price sure they will sell more systems but nothing to write home about.

just focus on making better games and changing up the diversity a little

I agree with you.  I think it's wishful thinking to believe that Microsoft is going to allow people to use their own HDDs rather than their proprietary ones.

I think the reason why they are allowing USB drives up to 16 GB, is so that they can eliminate the memory card readers, saving money.  They can stop manufacturing memory cards, and license out official XBox360 USB drives, saving them money.  They aren't doing it so that it'll make the transition easier for when they decide, out of the goodness of their heart, to allow people to use 500GB external HDDs instead of their $130 250GB HDDs.