• Arcade (no hard drive) - $279.99 to $199.99
• Pro (60GB) - $349.99 to $299.99
• Elite (120GB) - $449.99 to $399.99

While the Arcade version does not really provide as much to a gamer as would the Pro or Elite version because of obvious reasons, it would be a cheap buy for a new next-gen console this upcoming holiday, and also might possibly boost Microsoft’s sales. Other than that, the Pro and Elite seem to both have a $50 cut on the price. If the rumor is true, it may help the sales for the Xbox 360 a bit the 3rd and mostly 4th quarter of this year. With rumors like this one, the only thing to do is play the waiting game. It is a good thing the waiting game does not require a subscription to play. Keep in touch for more details on this Xbox 360 price cut rumor!

If you want to check out the full article at Ars Technica.com, you can go directly to it by clicking here.

Source: The Magic Box

This marks the 10th anniversary for the Tales series in North America, and it will also be the first Tales game to be released not only in Japan but as well as North America in the same month! Tales of Vesperia is rated “T” for teen and will arrive in North America for the Xbox 360 on August 26. Whether this is your first time playing the series or not, the demo is an awesome way of getting a little taste of Tales of Vesperia, so do not miss out on it!

Source: Games Press

Don’t worry, we’ll be keeping an eye on this for when Famitsu is released.

UPDATE: Square-Enix has launched a countdown site for the game, so this points to true more than anything. The countdown will apparently end on July 7th. Link

Sunday, the world exploded and oozed news goodness all over the media. For the few active gaming sites there was a slew of anxious activity surrounding a variety of Microsoft press leaks. The leaks were the result of a survey that was published. The part that should concern the RPG enthusiast in this mess entails a video simply named “Crucible.”

And as you can see, it is an extremely early build of what appears to be an RPG.

Some astute observers ran to the trademark office and checked up on the name of the title. After a bit of digging, Sega’s The Crucible: The Evil Within trademark from 2007 popped up. That then led to the speculation that it was the “secret project” that Sega and Too Human developer Silicon Knights were working on. We can blame that bit of conjecture on both hyper journalists and Denis Dyack, who spilled the beans on the project not-so secret project on an IGN podcast awhile back.

With the new information of what this mysterious video could be, MTV Multiplayer Blog writer Steven Totilo e-mailed Sega. Sega representative Steve Groll fired back with this statement:

“That video is not the game that Silicon Knights is creating for us. I have no idea if it is a game they are working on for someone else, but it’s definitely not the project that Silicon Knights and SEGA are producing. I can’t reveal any info about the game we currently have in development, but I can tell you that it is not titled ‘The Crucible.’ More news about our game coming soon.”

Kotaku picked up the ball on the story today. According to an anonymous Kotaku source (which could either be a hotdog or a human) the “Crucible” footage is the work of Big Huge Games. It’s a notable developer because last year Oblivion designer Ken Rolsten joined the studio. Also the source had this to say about the game:

According to the source, the footage that was leaked on Sunday represents an “absolutely archaic build, and doesn’t even come close to representing what the game is or where it’s going” calling it “orders of magnitude better” than the footage suggests.” - Kotaku

To make matters harder for both the journalist and starving RPG enthusiast, the title isn’t due out until 2009. That is, if this is actually THQ’s title.

We’ll keep rolling updates as they come, folks. It’s the least we can do.

[Via Kotaku and MTV Multiplayer Blog]

In a recent interview with MMORPG.com, Turbine’s CEO Jim Crowley had this to say about porting existing titles to the console infrastructure:

“First, he told me that Turbine is investigating the world of cross-platform games, meaning consoles. “These worlds are so rich and robust, we do want them to be shared across platforms, both for existing and future worlds,” Crowley said. We should expect more details on the how and when “later on in the year”. He did make a point of clarifying that Turbine will remain dedicated to the PC, but want to make sure that people who want to enjoy the games (present and future) on the console will be able to do that.”

Inference suggests that Turbine has only two decent options here, either Lord of the Rings Online or Dungeons and Dragons Online. This is certainly an exciting prospect, considering next-gen console players have only been able to experience the rehashed world of Phantasy Star Online and the aging Final Fantasy XI. Yet, there is more speculation with this story.

Joystiq did some digging around and found that Turbine has a new job posting for a senior console engineer. In addition to that, developers wrote on the Dungeons and Dragons community forums that they are “working full-tilt on several things that are still under tight wraps. DDO will be getting more and more focus from Turbine’s marketing and PR teams over the coming months.”

Do all the pieces fit? Probably not, but it all sounds fairly intriguing. Chances are no one will catch a glimpse of the product until E3, but we’ll keep our fingers crossed.

[Via Kotaku, Joystiq, and MMORPG.com]

I know a handful of WoW players who are hardcore completionists. We’re talking full rep bars on even the most useless of factions. I can imagine this group being into achievements, sure, but will you see average players take to them?  Some feel that they’re extraneous and worthless, but Blizzard may integrate them in a meaningful way. Perhaps one could be awarded a title or a gimmick item for completing them? We’ll see.

This is still just a rumor, though. As Kotaku points out, the screens may be faked. Blizzard might even scrap the idea. They’ve tossed out bigger concepts before.

There’s a string of sources on this, but we’re going to just go ahead and thank Kotaku since we saw it there. Thanks, Kotaku!

We know that Bioware is working on a project with Lucasarts. We know that they’re working on an MMO in Austin. It’s not really that far fetched to think.

While Star Wars is certainly seems like a perfect setting for an MMO, it’s obvious that not every developer can do it right. Let’s hope Bioware pulls out something great or everyone will get to experience the overwhelming disappointment of SOE’s effort.

Personally, I’d much rather a new single-player experience with the Mass Effect engine and combat/conversation systems, but I guess we can’t have everything.

Check out the full story over at Kotaku.

videogaming247 recently asked Namco-Bandai about the game, and all a spokesperson had to say was that it is only announced for Japan at this moment, and there are currently no plans to bring it to North America. This doesn’t mean that the game won’t be heading our way in the future, but PS3 owners in the States may not get to enjoy Chopin’s dream.

Since Square Enix’s 2007 fiscal results were displayed for the first time, the company has been tossing out a few interesting blurbs. First, there is last week’s quote from President Yoichi Wada stating a claim of expansion to Reuters at the Media and Telecoms Summit in Tokyo:

“Economies of scale and breadth of scope are getting important. It may be a business alliance or it may be us taking a stake in others, but we need to go beyond traditional Square Enix.”

Sounds great in theory, but the word on the street this week is that during an internal meeting last month, Wada blew up and threatened to start firing employees who refused to stop making games out of mainstream appeal. Why a President of a company would ever even have to appeal to his underlings like that sounds odd to begin with. Do Presidents not have the authority to say, “Hey, I don’t want this game made?”

Regardless, this all brings up an interesting point of where the line between originality and mainstream collide. Is Wada trying to convey that re-releasing older titles can still work if utilized properly? Does this mean games like The World Ends with You or Project Sylpheed are no longer going to be developed? Will we see a collection of carnival games for the Wii from Square Enix next? Certainly a benchmark series like Final Fantasy is not going to get encompassed by this, right?

We’ll keep you informed whenever a rebuke arises.

[Thanks Colette from Destructoid, and Kotaku]