'The site also reports that power supply makers have said that the current 210 watt power supply of the 360 is being switched for a 170-watt alternative'

100% incorrect, Xbox 360 powersupplies have always been 203w until a month or two ago when the new Falcon edition 360's started to come out meaning that the new power supplies are 175w.

Once the 360 can have 65nm or better yet 45nm processing I think Microsoft should seriously put the power supply in the console itself, if Sony can already do it I don't know why Microsoft cannot.

Also I highly doubt Microsoft would include a blu-ray player in this gens 360, they could release an external one quite easily.

I strongly disagree with the notion of shoehorning the power supply back into the 360's case.

The current configuration is preferable, and improvements based around it preferable to placing the vulnerable heat source somewhere it can't be cooled OR replaced easily. My PS dies now, I track down a replacement plug it back in and I'm good to go...an internal power supply would mean total replacement, which is completely undesireable, thanks to MS' DLC liscencing structure (I'd lose the ability to access current DLC while offline, which isn't so bad, except for Rock Band songs I like to play offline)

Trying to fit an already compact power supply into a tight space is one of the surest recipes for disaster in electronics design, I'm only a layman, but my personal experience screams this at me...for a reliable power supply you want big and beefy...you're just asking for another RRoD down the road when all the supercompact PSes fail en masse.

The only cons to a separate PS are subjective, and things people can just get over.

I strongly disagree with the notion of shoehorning the power supply back into the 360's case.

The current configuration is preferable, and improvements based around it preferable to placing the vulnerable heat source somewhere it can't be cooled OR replaced easily. My PS dies now, I track down a replacement plug it back in and I'm good to go...an internal power supply would mean total replacement, which is completely undesireable, thanks to MS' DLC liscencing structure (I'd lose the ability to access current DLC while offline, which isn't so bad, except for Rock Band songs I like to play offline)

Trying to fit an already compact power supply into a tight space is one of the surest recipes for disaster in electronics design, I'm only a layman, but my personal experience screams this at me...for a reliable power supply you want big and beefy...you're just asking for another RRoD down the road when all the supercompact PSes fail en masse.

The only cons to a separate PS are subjective, and things people can just get over.

I wouldn't take it with a pinch of salt. I'd take it with a pinch of April 1st.

Spong doesn't understand that plugging the drive cannot play the movie; it requires Blu-Ray movie playback software, which requires 3 million lines of code and an implementation of Java which Microsoft banned from its own product(Vista, XP, Xbox 360). Not to mention that the royalty is $60 per playback package. Throw in the cost of drive $120 plus retailer mark-up, and the lowest Microsoft can charge is $300. Just ask why Dell charges $250 for the previlliage of watching Blu-Ray movies in its budget laptops. And the last nail in the coffin is that Xbox 360 can't decode full bitrate H.264 stream. Xbox 360 carries no decoding hardware unlike PS3 and did all its decoding in software at 30 mbits/s max, but can't go as high as 40 mbits/s required by Blu-Ray specification.

Therefore, there is 0% chance of Blu-Ray playback in Xbox 360 or Xbox's successor in 2011. Not only it doesn't make any financial sense, it just can't be done on Xbox 360 hardware.