Do you have a source for those tasty rumors?

Rockstar is not clamoring for HDD only games.

Nor are any other developers.

5400 RPM HDD (as in 360) is hardly any faster transfer speed than 12X DVD anyway, so if they were, it wouldn't make any sense at all.

 A birdy told me :)

Seriously though, the first part is pretty confirmed. The 2nd part is not quite as confirmed, but hopefully true, and makes a lot of sense, especially about clearing out 90nm stock. 

Don't think ms will do this. Probably repackage if anything. Like new core will be with 1g usb flash memory or something. They need core to compete with Wii pricing.

Er... Sharky sources are your friend. If you don't have them, you have far less credibility. I have worked in retail stores and that certainly does look like a valid stock report showing the model has been discontinued, at least in that store. Of course it's just as likely that Best Buy is telling Microsoft to go to hell by not buying them anymore as it is that they are actually discontinued.

The core is a pointless SKU. It's definitely not going to compete with the Wii, even at 250$

It shouldn't even be though of as a 250$ SKU if it goes down to that because you need to buy a memory card.

This is good if true so that future games won't have to be made for a lowest common denominator with no hard drive.

Yes! More great news for Nintendo! I just love when Sony and Microsoft discontinue the versions of their product that are competing with Wii and take away features (backwards compatibility, battery life, price point) that the consumer values.