It's no secret Microsoft does periodic hardware revisions to the Xbox 360 that are meant to fix bugs, improve performance and lower production costs. Usually these updates go unannounced, and never have they involved a change to the console's form factor since its 2005 release. But with project Natal coming up later this year it seems the company might be considering releasing something sleeker and lighter along with it to help boost sales.

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What's unfortunate is that even if they make a slim model, they can't improve on its performance as it would make the older models either inferior or the new one would just have performance going to waste as developers have to make games that will run on all of them. I prefer the freedom to do whatever I want with my platform and not have to be limited by a closed platform. PC gaming all the way!

The Cooler Master branding on the fan I find extremely suspicious.

But as for a slimmed down version of the 360, I find that very probably whilst this may not be it.

Technology has come a long way in 5 years, smaller manufacturing processes for the CPU, GPU (or hybrid 2 in 1 chip) would mean smaller, more efficient and cooler chips which would allow them to cool it all efficiently in a smaller chassis.

Wow first comment is a PC elitist one, I'm shocked.

Smaller is fine but it better be bullet proof and not have tons of cooling problems or quality issues. There's no reason something that costs as much as the 360 does/did should have so many issues.

I will much rather buy the parts myself, put them together myself, configure them and then upgrade anytime. I dont like consoles much

I guess if I was Microsoft, I'd be spending more time and resources on the next gen of my console, and less on re-hashing my current line. I mean, the PS3 slim made some sense, but this far into the life cycle of the 360, they should be working on leapfrogging to the 720 or something like that :)

Then again, maybe a redesigned system is intended to be built much cheaper, so they can initiate a killer price war against the Wii and PS3...

If I hadn't already bought 2 xbox 360's and had both of them die on me, I would consider buying a "slim" xbox.

That would be the smart thing to do, but knowing Microsoft, they will most likely cut their costs and maintain price levels so they can make greater margins. Also, if they are currently making a slim model, I hope they include a larger HD like Sony did. Otherwise, it seems kind of pointless to spend this much time/money researching how to make a smaller-form 360 five years into its life cycle.

Microsoft is onto something here: smaller 360 = smaller explosion = smaller legal costs

I'm still disappointed how game companies are going about designing their games. Consoles are going to continue to hold back graphics in games and stunt innovation. One of the major examples of this is the two newest games CoD: Modern Warfare 2 and Battlefield: Bad Company 2 being console ports. MW2 runs almost maxed out on my 8800 GTS 512 released Nov/Dec 2008. It definitely looks pretty good, but I'm sure if the console market wasn't as prolific as it is compared to the PC gamer market, newer games would begin to outpace hardware yet again. Bring on the Crysis.

When are the next generation of consoles due out? I'm thinking a 5 year old platform is pretty old in computer terms. I would have thought they'd start investing their development efforts in the next gen rather than downsizing what they already have....

hey its gr8! but most the games run well on a pc! and i love it! i dont like consoles!

5 years is a pretty long time in console terms, I think this has been traditionally a console's lifecycle, but the current generation will go on for much longer. Maybe M$ will release the Xbox 720 when the world adopts (or doesn't adopt) Blu-ray.

I agree with the point above that consoles are holding back graphics development, but unfortunately that's just the way it is - most people can't afford to spend thousands on a gaming PC or can't be bothered to research upgrade possibilities and with the gaming market becoming more and more "casual" I think console gaming is only going to grow in proportion to PC gaming. Another reason is piracy but that's a different debate...

Anyway let's just hope Crysis 2 isn't going to be a console port!

I have to partial agree with you on this one. Not that I am a "PC Gamer Elitest" I like my PS3 too. But just about all the games that are put out on the Xbox360 come out for the PC and run just fine on my PC. So why get an extra system??

As for a "slim" xbox
thats about my take on it too.

xbox/xbox 360 = over glorified paper weight / door stop.

if it were a slimmer 360, wouldnt the attachable hard drive have to be modified as well? would it become internal? i cant see it, although im not saying its not gonna happen. just wondering how the hard drive would work, and also a price cut? arcade versions going for $179.99, these will be, what?.... $149.99

If I'm not mistaken both Sony and Microsoft want to push the current generation to around 2012-13 before moving on. Which I guess makes sense for them to increase profits as much as they can and the casual gamer who doesn't have to run out and buy the next big thing. So coming out with a slim 360 version might not be such a bad of an idea, but personally I'd like them to move on too. Especially since as pointed out game developers might be holding back on some innovation in order to capitalize on console hardware.

That's hardly elitist considering everything he said is true. But I do understand what you mean with PC gamers thinking they are superior (which they are ;-) )

I would assume the 360 is just shorter as it's already ~12in tall. As redesigning the HDD and making new ones seems like a waste but you never know it's Microsoft. I'd also guess they would simply get ride of the arcade version and use the Slim in its place with a smaller HDD like 60gb compared to the elites 120/250. Then again I'm just speculating and this seems the most logical to me at least.

That motherboard looks less complex than some microATX motherboards I've used! Can it really be an Xbox 360? Anyway, I just bought one last month, I'm not going to upgrade just because its smaller.

Microsoft and Sony have both said that the next gen consoles won't be coming out until around 2012-2013. If this fixes the issues with the current 360 than I think it will be a great addition. I would also like to know how console graphics stunts innovation in games. If anything the retarded casual gamers that only cares about graphics have stunted innovation in games. If you are a real gamer gameplay > graphics. Sure graphics are nice to have and expected to be good. With current console hardware(-wii) the only stunt in innovation is that the 360 still only uses a dvd drive, which limits the amount of content that can be offered.

Some of us like consoles since we don't have to worry about shelling out 100~200 per year to keep our system up to date.