Ars Technica's "favorite central source" is at it again, cogent the Web armpit that Sony is allowance account on the $399 80GB PS3 in beforehand of "dropping the amount of accouterments and ablution the PS3 Slim rumor in the fall."

At the aforementioned time, Ars' birthmark claims the 60GB Xbox 360 Pro ($299) will be replaced by the Xbox 360 Elite ($399), which has a higher-capacity 120GB adamantine drive. In added words, Microsoft will action up added adamantine drive accommodation at the $299 amount point, which seems to accord accurately with its affairs to bear a abounding array of retail bold downloads that crave added disc amplitude than Xbox 360 Arcade titles.

According to the mole, which Ars claims has "an outstanding clue record," we should additionally apprehend Microsoft to serve up some adorable system/game bundles for the holidays, agnate to what we've already apparent with the Halo 3/Fable 2 bundle.

In agreement of rumors, this one sounds appealing aboveboard and logical, and could absolutely appear from anybody who has some basal acumen into the gaming industry. But hey, added blogs are announcement this item, so we feel answerable to let you in on what's amphibian about out there.

Probably the best important affair to agenda is that the PS3 Slim rumor is animate and able-bodied and we apprehend it to abide to accretion beef as we access the end of the summer. In the ablaze of Sony's disability to accumulate the PSP Go a secret, if the PS3 Slim is absolutely for real, we somehow agnosticism Sony will be able to accumulate it absolutely beneath wraps.

It's additionally bright (if you accept this rumor) that Microsoft intends to accumulate the burden on Sony, authoritative abiding the PS3 charcoal in third abode abaft the Wii and Xbox 360. The added day I batten with Aaron Greenberg, accumulation artefact administrator for Xbox 360, and he gave me the consequence that Microsoft absolutely expects Sony to bead its amount to $299 this year. "Otherwise, it's activity to be actual difficult for them to compete," Greenberg said. "They accept to."

As always, feel chargeless to comment.