Following last week's report that Microsoft had updated the 360's motherboard, the company has now confirmed that the new Arcade models come with 256MB of onboard memory. The upgrade will allow more games and media to be stored inside without the need for an external memory card and of course make the Arcade model NXE-compliant out of the box.

Although a bump in the amount of onboard memory seems like a good thing at first sight, it actually means a loss in portability and storage space for new Xbox 360 Arcade owners as they would presumably no longer be eligible for that free 512MB memory card or cheap 20GB hard drive upgrade Microsoft has been offering.

The company made no particular mention of the oft-reported Jasper motherboard update that supposedly brings a cooler running 65nm GPU. Instead, the just company stuck to its usual response that "it is constantly updating the console's more than 1700 internal components."