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I always thought of summer as a time to shed a few pounds. Following the trend, the Xbox 360’s will be losing a little as well, just in time for the new school year. Microsoft announced that the Xbox 360’s will finally be getting a price cut, effective tomorrow (August 8, 2007). The new pricing is as follows:

Xbox 360 Elite $449.99 (-$30)
Xbox 360 System $349.99 (-$50)
Xbox 360 Core $279.99 (-$20)

In addition, the Halo 3 Special Edition Console price will be $399.99 and feature a hunter-ish green hue with gold accents in certain places. A week or so ago, Microsoft also dropped the price on the HD-DVD add-on player to $179. So, things are coming down in price, finally, but does it have enough of an impact to make you purchase a console?

Well, after breathing its last few breaths of gaming goodness, I believe that my launch day Xbox 360 is now dead. I spoke with customer support this morning and got the scoop on the current warranties and repair service. Although Microsoft extended the 90 day warranty period to 1 year from the date of the purchase, the free repair for all consoles manufactured before January 1, 2006 does not exist any more.

So what does this mean for me? I’d have to pay $139 for Microsoft to repair my console, which comes with a 1 year warranty and a free month of Xbox Live. Ehh, you’re telling me that while I have a console that is known to have experienced a high number of failures, that I have to pay $139 for you guys to repair it? I managed to work it down 25% of the price. I felt a little more comfortable knowing that for $100, if anything does go wrong, it’ll be under warranty, and I’m getting a discounted price. It wasn’t as much as I was hoping for, but I can’t complain.

However, now I have to make my HD DVD player work with my computer, then hook up my PC to my TV so I can still watch Planet Earth in HD. I suppose that it isn’t a bad thing I can’t play any games during exams, but I really wanted to try Forza 2.

Update: After letting the Xbox 360 run for about 2 hours, I plugged in the HD DVD player to see what would happen. After watching approximately 10 minutes of Planet Earth, it locked up. I don’t know if this is an issue with the add-on itself, or if its my console. I’ll be calling to find out shortly.

Microsoft released the Spring update this morning for the Xbox 360 and I was bound to get my box updated this morning. Well, that was until when I turned on the machine and saw a screwy Xbox 360 logo overlaid with a checker pattern. So, I abruptly shut off the machine, turned it back on again, and watched as lights 1, 2, and 3 started flashing red…

By now, its 7:40am and I had to be on my way to class. So I left matters where they were and as soon as I got to work at 9, I immediately started doing some research on 360 error codes. My gut feelings was that there was something wrong with the GPU or the AV cable because there was no signal going to my TV. And after finding some help from llamma.com I was able to work things out.

I unplugged everything and restarted, nothing. Tried powering on without the hard drive, still nothing. So then I went through the process of finding the “hidden” error codes. Tried once and if memory serves me correctly got 0012. Over heating? Let’s try this again; next time I got something that was unknown.

Then I unplugged my HD DVD addon. I got mild results similar to when I turned on the Xbox earlier this morning. So I turned it off and then back on again and went through the process of finding the hidden error code again, this time without the HD DVD addon. Lo’ and behold, I got 0102. The people over at llamma aren’t sure what causes this, but have reason to believe that its GPU related (like I mentioned earlier) and one of the suggestions of resolving the error was switching the AV cable from “HDTV” to “TV” mode. Needless to say, I switched the cable to TV mode, turned on the Xbox and watched the thing boot up perfectly fine.

I then reluctantly downloaded the Spring update with bated breath until it finally completed the download and rebooted. After messing around for a moment, I switched back in to HDTV mode and all is well for right now. I have not yet plugged the HD DVD player back in. I haven’t heard of any issues with the update and the player, as the update has only been out a few hours. But if I find anything, I’ll be posting about it.

DigiTimes is reporting that the Xbox 360’s GPU will be shrinking in size very soon. This new 65nm Xenos chip will benefit the console due to less power consumption which gets dissipated as heat, thus, making the console cooler.

As a current 360 owner, I can vouch to say that the current 90nm chips make the thing very warm. That fact is pretty widely known. And for some people, holding out for Microsoft to make the transition to 65nm is enticing. It’d be nice to have a cooler and quieter 360, but I’m not going to complain too much. It’s encouraging that the switch is coming and maybe if my launch system dies by the time these new ones are out, I’ll pick up a new one.