No, this isn't an attempt to sell something, but it is an attempt to let you guys know just how inexpensive the Xbox 360 is becoming. The retail price is still $300, but that's for the Elite, which has a 120gb hard drive. If you want to keep expenses very low, you could go with the lesser value, regular Xbox 360 Arcade for $200. Then, you could go on eBay for a cheap hard drive. The 120gb hard drive sells for around $40-60 on eBay. Therefore, if you really want the 120gb package, you could potentially save $60 by buying the Arcade edition and adding the hard drive separately.

Obviously, you want to buy the console retail to have the warranty, in case it breaks, which has quite a big chance of happening, I'm afraid. You can buy all your extra accessories through eBay, because they aren't covered by the warranty, anyway, and if they break, they're cheap and easy to replace.

Now, for my Xbox 360, I bought a broken one off eBay for $35. I then spent $20 on cords, $20 on a controller, and $20 on a replacement dvd drive. The price is rounded down a bit, because I can't recall the exact price right now, but overall, I spent $120, and that includes Fable 2 with a strategy guide. I got all this from eBay. The bad thing about mine is I had to fix it myself, and it came broken, also, it had no warranty, so i couldn't just send it into microsoft for repairs/replacement.

My Xbox 360 now works about 99% of the time, so if you're tech savvy and are low on cash, fixing up a broken 360 might actually be a nice project, but I would strongly suggest staying away from the 360 if you don't want it to break. The Nintendo Wii might actually be the only console (out of PS3, 360, and itself) to have a functional design.