Despite recent rumours stating otherwise, Microsoft official John Porcaro (Group Manager, PR & Communications at Microsoft US) made it pretty clear that there are currently no plans for a Xbox 360 price drop this fall, thus blowing away all hopes for a cheaper Xbox 360 by the time Sony's and Nintendo's next-gen consoles will hit the market, in late 2006. The clarification was made on the Gamerscore Blog, which is written by several employees of Microsoft.

In his post, Porcaro literally urges fans to "wait no longer" and just buy the damn thing already. Well, actually, his own words were more like this:

"If you've been holding off picking one up because you think they'll be cheaper in the future, or they've been hard to find, or because you're too busy catching up on past episodes of Lost, wait no longer!

(...)

Just think... this holiday as some people go broke because they're forced to buy movie technology with their game console, you'll be choosing from a 160 games, including Gears of War, Madden 07, Splinter Cell, Forza 2, and lots more. Oh and later on? How about Mass Effect, Halo 3, and Grand Theft Auto for starters."

So if you really, really want one, I guess now you know what you have to do... Or, of course, you could wait for Sony's high-priced gaming-multimedia combo... Or you could just go for Nintendo's upcoming console, and save yourself a lot of money. After all, what better fun than letting your little sister play with your Wii?

(N.B. Archive text, links removed)