In a move to battle the PS3 in Europe, where it is outselling it by a significant margin, Microsoft has dropped the price of the 360. The new pricing is 269.99 Euros ($AU445) for the Premium, 369.99 Euros  ($AU610) for the Elite, and 199.99 Euros ($AU330) for the Arcade

Sliced Comments: While we sometimes follow the release schedule of Europe, we'll have to see whether we receive any price cuts locally. The European move largely seems to be a move to stifle the PS3 growth, which is outselling the 360 at 3:2 according to some estimates. 

Awesome. The Elite is still a waste of goddamn money though. An extra $150 for a harddrive worth $20 and HDMI output? No bloody thanks.

How is the hard drive worth $20? It comes pre-installed with lots of behind the scenes goodies that keep it safe on the interwebz, and it's also custom sized. The actual memory on the hard drive is worth $20 in laymans terms, but when you put the whole accessory together, it's worth more. The Elite is also Black    and regular Pro consoles come with HDMI nowadays.

I've only got the standard hard drive, and never have space issues. The only reason you'd need the larger space is if you had the Video Marketplace. Of course, doesn't look like we're ever going to get that due to our backward broadband. Bloody backwater we are!

I'd use more than 20gb if I had the 120gb HDD. I tend to download a lot of demos and I have to delete them to make room for more.

So Dave is saying that one of the bonus features of the Elite isn't even a bonus anymore, but standard?

And as for the "pre-loaded" goodies, I don't want them. I want a blank hard drive that I can put my own junk on. I don't want to pay for "goodies" that are "free" with the purchase of an Elite.

And just because it's "custom sized" doesn't mean jack. MS could have saved everyone trouble by using standard ATA or SATA drives. But no, they had to be dicks and use propriety to drive up prices and keep margins for themselves. Because heaven forbid anybody should make it easier on the consumer.

It's all done for security reasons..

..which people have got around anyhow..

I've got like 9 gig free on mine. I've got a few demos and game, but I don't see much on XBLA that I think is worth paying for or downloading.

XBLA games are only 30-60 megs anyway =P