Microsoft Announces Forza, Marvel Xbox 360 Bundle

Microsoft has announced two new bundles for this holiday season, with the $449.99 Xbox 360 Elite and the standard $349.99 Xbox 360 model both packed in with Microsoft Game Studios racer Forza Motorsport 2 and Activision's Marvel Ultimate Alliance. Microsoft says both bundles will be available by the end of October and throughout the holidays. The retail packaging bears the company's new model-specific slogans, with the Elite tagged "Go Big", and the standard "Go Pro". On October 3rd, various now-deleted online retail listings showed the existence of a third pack, the $279.99 'Arcade' bundle, which bore all similar markings as the new models, and was tagged "Go Play". According to previous reports, the new model, which will replace the Core model, will come complete with HDMI, a 256MB memory card, and five free Xbox Live Arcade titles packed in, including Pac-Man and UNO. As yet, Microsoft has not officially announced the bundle, but all signs point to its imminent arrival. [UPDATE: Video game prediction market simExchange's Jesse Divnich has revealed the immediate results of the change on its users sales predictions, commenting: "The prediction market reacted by decreasing the forecast for Xbox 360 sales in October from an expected 315,000 units down to 304,000 units, a 3.4% decrease. This indicates that the holiday bundle will cause minimal delays to consumer purchases." Divnich continued: "Additionally, Microsoft will more than make up for the lost 10,000 sales in November and December when the bundle is released. This bundle release will ultimately increase Microsoft’s market share in the home console market and will continue to widen the gap between the Xbox 360 and Sony’s PS3."]