No shit, I'm not talking about minor little itty bitty cost cutting "upgrades" like Sony did with the original PS1/PS2 systems... I'm talking about a major change like the Jasper unit is, with its completely redesigned GPU.

We won't see another major change to the 360 architecture like that unless they go for a "slim" model like Sony did with PS1 and PS2, but that won't happen for sometime, and by the time it is released (if it's released at all) it'll be because Microsoft is on the verge of rolling out its next console.

Talk to me next year... if Microsoft does in fact announce yet another major change in 360 hardware, then an announcement about the 360's successor will follow it pretty much immediately.

The RROD is the only major issue (imho) outside of Backwards Compatibility for the 360.

I've read, and it seems like with very little reports, any Falcon produced this year seems to have a very small failure rate. The question is how how many will fail in two, three, or even four or more years? If the amount is very little then MS has done a great job fixing the RROD issue, but still not a acceptable rate. Do you think the PS3 and Wii will have a 10% failure rate over the course of four years? It seems doubtful, so MS is in dead last when it comes to hardware reliability.

Anyways September is good news for those waiting to jump on the price drop, especially since It happens in September. It looks like this will be the Falcon hunt all over again, ie people asking to look at the boxes and not buy it unless It's a Jasper. By December there should be very little if any Falcons left on the market if Microsoft's price drop has such a big impact as I think it will.

Also, keep in mind you will be able to burn your games to the hard drive soon. When that happens the disc drive will hardly ever be used (once the games are burned) which, guess what? Equals less heat produced, and your 360 will no longer sound like a large UFO because the DVD drive won't be humming.

Not really - smaller processors won't make the games run faster on the consoles. As for the race to a mini model, ps3 integrated power brick will be an issue later on.

Bold 1: The next upgrade is the CPU+GPU combination, with a slim console. It'll come next year.

Bold 2: Not really, Microsoft will probably release their next iteration in 2011 or 6 years after the Xbox360 was released. We haven't even heard rumours or anything about one coming out this year.

Bold 3: As above and releasing hardware updates are not reasons to believe that a new version of the Xbox360 is coming out immediately. Wasn't the PS2 slim on the market for a couple of years before the PS3 for example.

Won't power bricks be able to shrink with the more efficient smaller chips on both 360 and PS3.

Does the Jasper revision fix the disk-scratching issues some users are complaining about? or have MS put that down to user abuse and left it at that?

AFAIK thats fixed, it was an issue with not having a scratch guard on the lens

Yes, but it will delay a mini model unless they either ditch the internal source (which was developed on ps3 R&D budget) or the minimodel is larger. If the vallhalla rumors are correct, next year they'll launch the 360 mini, possibly for christmas.

Is there a way to indentify if it got the Jasper before buying the damn thing? I have been waiting for Microsoft to get rid of RROD before buying a 360 and there is a bunch of game I want to play but with no way of knowing which is which ill probably have to wait until they completly phase out the old model, which could take a while I think.

I've heard rumors that the new batches aren't sporting the sticker with the wattage consumption so we might be back again to lifting the flap to check the print on the back of the unit.