Xbox 360 Slim

I've owned a lot of video game consoles over the years (Atari 2600, Atari 7800, Colecovision, Sega Genesis, Xbox). One of the reasons I stopped upgrading after the original Xbox came out in Nov 2001, was because the Xbox 360 had a lot of hardware issues. My original Xbox still works, but only after adding several upgrades over the past ten years.

The Xbox 360 came out in May 2005 and is still sold today, six years later. The latest version is the Xbox 360 S, which has built in wifi and a smaller case. The "slim" version came out in June 2010 and has replaced the older version. Microsoft lowered the price of the older model by $50 to clear the old stock.

The newer 360's have been redesigned to minimize the hardware problems, run cooler, and use less power, as such, the three year extended warranty has been reduced to one year. Microsoft was smart to redesign the 360 after 5 years, if only to extend it's life, while they develop the next next generation game console. Rumor has it that we won't see the next wave of game consoles until 2013 or 2014. The newest 360 games are still $60 each, but there are many older games that you can get now for $20 or less. The Xbox 360 is also expanding the number of streaming video channels they have to offer. Without the redesign and next generation consoles being two or three years away, I probably wouldn't have considered getting one.