Every existing PS3 phat owner I know went and bought a Slim. I actually reckon at least 50-60% of PS3 slim sales was to existing owners. Me and all my 360 friends would definately rebuy the 360 Slim even though we have a 360. It happened with the PS2 as well. All of us ( me and my friends ) bought the Slim PS2 even though we had perfectly working Phat PS2's.

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?

Over the last few months there has been a number of announcements that has got me thinking.

M$ have brought in the USB device connection. Along with this is a more defined robust data transfer system to transfer all info you have for games, saves etc on your HDD. We know also Natal will release likely in Novemeber.

This brings me to the next point, which is not yet confirmed at all by M$. But with my wondering brain believe the following scenario is exactly what M$ are gearing towards.

The Slim 360. What has that got to do with any of the afformentioned announcements?

M$ are now in a prime position to capatilise perfectly on a Slim 360. The design of a Slim would be able to do away with the existing 360 HDD completely. Currently USB devices are maxed at 30gb. I believe this is purely so the HDD's will continue to sell at this moment in time. I believe the Slim will launch with Natal, as a package. Likely with a 60gb USB device. With the release of Natal and Slim I believe M$ will lift the 30gb limit to an endless limit. 500GB USB HDD anyone?

I firmly believe USB decision was made by M$ to make a Slim transition with no HDD much easier and influential. With not having to worry about where the bulky HDD 360 would go, they could cncentrate on a sleak and visually pleasing design for a Slim.

There is little point in releasing a Slim after a 360 Natal package to. It makes perfect business sense that this new revitalised 360 in Slim form is released with the Natal package. And firmly believe that is why the USB stuff is being introduced now.

What do you guys think? E3 announcement anyone?

No, the reason is because they want to protect the margin/profitability of their Elite SKU. If anyone could simply add a HDD to an Arcade they wouldn't be able to sell the higher profit Xbox 360 Elites and to allow their loss lead SKU to be more financially viable at a lower price point. However now they are under more pricing pressure they have relented somewhat for the Arcade SKU to allow it to have an external USB drive attached and it also allows them to remove the card readers from the slim SKU and save money on every unit produced. HDD sizes are an area of greatly diminishing returns and there are simply very few people who would want to put a larger than 120GB HDD into their console.