The Xbox 360 has come to be known as the best and worst gaming console ever made. Having been in the market for already five years, it was the first game console to offer wireless controllers and HD quality graphics, it set the bar on gaming experience and made

players wanting more and more. However the experience came at a price. The console's three red lights problem had torn out many fans from the franchise. Those who had felt it first hand downplayed the product's good features since it did end up useless after the warranty expires. Fortunately, Microsoft has finally made a gem of a product with the new Xbox 360 250GB. Also known as the 360 slim, this new model remakes the original design and finally addresses the big flaws that haunted the franchise.

At first glance it already looks like a big improvement from it's predecessors. Much of the old 360 problems that people experienced, were due to poor heat management. Hence Microsoft had remade the chassis of the unit itself and you can clearly see a new larger fan located at the side (top if you set it up horizontally) which seem to replace the old setup of 2 low powered exhaust fans. Also, the slim as it's name suggests is much more compact than the previous versions. With the use of the Valhalla motherboard, Microsoft has managed to produce a new unit only two thirds the size of a standard 360. Whether this solves the heat problem entirely is unknown, but the one thing that we can be sure of is that this machine can manage its own heat level and even force itself to shut down when it reaches a risky temperature level.

The 360 slim now has a built-in core temperature gage that constantly monitors the motherboard and chip's heat level and provides you with warnings stating that the machine either needs to shutdown in an moment or if it must absolutely turn itself off to reduce the risk of damage to the equipment. This feature I dare say is revolutionary and something that console owners have wanted for a long time. Even the PS3 can experience overheating problems which cause either temporary damage or render the unit completely useless. It seems that as we push the game industry to make better games and prettier graphics, we will inevitably push the technology to its limit. Hence having a console that actually warns you that it has to power down or else it gets destroyed, would really be a good investment.

The features that remained in this new model were the 360's HDMI support, usb support with up to 5 ports in this version, wifi/Xbox live and the detachable hard disk. The hard drive however has been relocated to the base of the new model. It also got a new look that makes it very much different from the previous version. Although the hard disk is now smaller that before, it has been placed relatively inside the unit itself. This means the user would have to remove the bottom cover of the console in order to get the hard disk. While that would seem to be an inconvenience, the up-side of this is that the usb support allows people to save their games and profiles in a flash stick and the data anywhere. The disk's capacity is now 250GB and unfortunately there doesn't seem to be a way to use an old 360 hard drive with the new unit.

Now the question people have been asking about this new model is still " is it worth buying".

Despite the new and desirable features that I mentioned earlier, there are still aspects and flaws that sadly cannot be endorsed by the new technology. For one, the new unit for some has come a little too late. This is especially felt by those who have not only mailed their broken units to warranty time and again, but have also resorted to buying previous versions that were also claiming to end the heat problem completely. Suffice to say gamers who love their consoles can say that the manufacturers had screwed them over one too many times with false promises. Also, in a statistical note, consoles are believed to only have a life expectancy of 10 years before next gen. This means people believe that by now companies like Sony, Nintendo, and even Microsoft are already planing their new generation consoles, giving the 360 slim only 5 years before gamers move to new tech. However, a lot of game developers do agree that this generation of consoles are going to outlive their normal cycle. Aside from the fact that multiplayer has spread like wildfire, the social level of gamers is still growing. People will continue to love their games and the gaming community they are a part of, and the 360 slim will be just what every Xbox fan would ever want and need for a long long time.