New Xbox 360 Bundles to Include Forza 2, Marvel: Ultimate Alliance by Late October

Turn 10's highly customizable racer Forza Motorsport 2 and Raven Software's superhero beat-em-up Marvel: Ultimate Alliance will now come packaged with the standard $349.99 Xbox 360 and $449.99 Xbox 360 Elite, Microsoft announced this morning. Both titles were well received by the gaming populace at the time of their respective releases--the multiplatform Marvel: Ultimate Alliance arrived in fall 2006, whereas the Xbox 360 exclusive Forza Motorsport 2 skidded into stores this spring. No mention was made of the $399.99 Halo 3 Special Edition Xbox 360, which does not pack Halo 3 or any other bundled game, or the $279.99 Xbox 360 Core system, which does not come with the necessary storage media to save progress in a hypothetical bundled game. Rumors and retailer listings have indicated that Microsoft will replace the Core package with a new Xbox 360 Arcade bundle, which would carry the same price but come with additional goodies such as a 256MB Memory Card and a five-game Xbox Live Arcade disc. The Xbox 360 Arcade is also said to pack a wireless controller; the Core is the only Xbox 360 SKU to include a wired controller. The game-packing bundle announced today will be available in stores by late October, the same timeframe that rumors and listings give for the Xbox 360 Arcade package. As noted earlier this year, the standard Xbox 360 now ships with the HDMI port that premiered on the Xbox 360 Elite hardware, another feature not found on the Core unit but rumored to be included in the Arcade system.