The rumored price cut was all, but confirmed. Finally as of September 5th, 2008, the Xbox 360 can be found as low as $199.99 USD/CAD. Well, the Arcade SKU can. Here’s the official breakdown:

Arcade (no hard drive) to $199
Pro (60GB) to $299
Elite (120GB) to $399

Great news for those of you who’re itching to jump in.  As for the Jasper model with the die shrunk GPU and CPU? Not confirmed as of yet. Most units being sold are still Falcon based. Jasper models should be marked lower than the Falcon’s 175 Watts.

Why is Jasper so important? Falcons are still susceptible to the ‘Red Ring of Death’ and I certainly don’t want that to happen on my fourth Xbox 360. So I’m going to wait and wait until somebody posts up proof of a Jasper unit.

Will Sony respond? Doubtful. They’ve been adament about making a profit, but that hasn’t stopped them from rejiggering the hard drive size and value angle of their current $399.99 and $499.99 price points.

These were resized from 5120 x 2880 - so no, they’re not 100% authentic. However, I am still impressed by the E3 2008 showing and thus I have some degree of hope for this real time strategy take on the Halo franchise.

Halo Wars is slated for sometime early next year.

Microsoft posted this handful of screenshots from that Xbox 360 exclusive RPG fans have been clamoring about. These screens aren’t showing the best side of Fable 2, but that could be just me.

Fable 2 debuts later this year on October 21st.

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T-Minus 8 days and counting for Too Human. In the meantime, Microsoft have been unleashing its media load on a weekly basis. This batch isn’t as large, but it’s quality over quantity here.

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Seems like Microsoft and Silicon Knights are pouring out the Too Human media this week. It’s not surprising though, the game debuts in 11 days.

Surprisingly, these newest screenshots are quite good. They’re the most interesting I’ve seen so far.

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Looks like a real price cut is coming for the entire Xbox 360 console hardware lineup if the rumors are true. The new pricing is rumored to take affect in early September as follows:

Arcade (no hard drive) to $199
Pro (60GB) to $299
Elite (120GB) to $399

This is a Microsoft rumor and since Microsoft rumors tend to be legitimate leaks: I’m a believer. Plus, ArsTechnica has a proven track record for this kind of thing. (They predicted the 40 GB PS3 and the upcoming 60 GB Xbox 360).

I guess I’m waiting for this price drop before replacing my current Xbox 360 with the 60 GB variant. I’m also hoping the new 60 GB models will be confirmed Jasper models by that time as well.

With blogs, message boards and an extremely vocal minority, it’s tough to get rid the terrible stigma surrounding Windows Vista. There are folks like me who’re trying to dispel the misinformation, but we can only do so much. What Vista needs is for Microsoft to step up and set the record straight.

And they have with, ‘Mojave‘.

Microsoft decided to gather a bunch of Vista haters and sit them down to experience this “new operating system” dubbed ‘Mojave’. Mojave isn’t a new version of Windows. It isn’t even a super secret Service Pack. It’s just plain old Vista, but these haters didn’t know that. They gave Microsoft positive impressions after spending some time with ‘Mojave’ and I’m sure they felt quite silly after realizing they ‘Mojave’ was just Vista in disguise.

Microsoft is planning to use these positive impressions in their new marketing campaign. I wish them the best. They have quite a bit of FUD to get rid of.

Bungie had it all lined up with a countdown page and everything. Hype was building and fans couldn’t wait to see what Bungie’s new Halo project as an independent studio was going to be.

Then Microsoft delayed the E3 announcement.

It was a last minute change which didn’t sit well with Bungie’s fans or Bungie’s president. Don Mattrick, head of the Xbox division, wanted to shift that announcement to another event later this year. It’s an understandable decision, but the last minute change of heart wasn’t.

I am curious as to what they were going to show. Halo 3 released just last year so I have my doubts about it being a true sequel. Perhaps its that third person tactical squad based Halo game that was rumored.

Prepare to say goodbye to DirectX 10 and hello to DirectX 11. Fortunately, we don’t have to say goodbye to the DX10 hardware yet. It seems the DirectX 11 API will be compatible with DirectX 10 hardware. That’s really kind of Microsoft, I guess.

Details on DirectX 11 are slim at the moment, but here’s the breakdown of what we know thus far:

• Multi-threaded resource handling to take advantage of multi-core processors
• Support for general purpose computing
• Tesselation support
• Full Windows Vista Support

Got game development skills? Want to make a profit using those skills? With XNA and the Xbox Live! Community Games initiative, amateur devs can start raking in the cash with the games they create and put up for Xbox 360 owners all over the world to try.

Microsoft is pushing hard for smaller developers to come onboard with incentives like:

• A cut of up to 70% of the total revenue (minus promotional fees if Microsoft chooses to promote your game)
• The ability to slap on any price tag (200 MS points to 800 MS points) AKA ($2.50 to $10) 

Sounds very nice from my little summary, but I’m sure it’s not all smiles and puppy dogs. Read the 1UP article for more details.