By now you’ve probably all seen the pictures and information concerning the “new” Xbox 360. That’s a picture of the box up there. It’s smaller, quieter, blacker, and has a 250GB internal hard drive. Not to mention, it WON’T red ring. Well, technically it can’t because there are no red LED’s on the unit at all. So….GOTCHA!

Anyway, if you are looking to trade up to the new 360 SKU you can do so for as little as $100 bucks (if you have the right hardware already). Throw in a few game trade-ins and a wireless headset or more and that “out of pocket” number goes down.

Here’s the breakdown on how to do the trade-in to GameStop:

GameStop will give you $100 for the Xbox 360 base system itself if you put it towards the purchase or reserving of the “new” Xbox. They will also give you $40 dollars for the Wi-Fi adapter if you have one ($50 for the newer black one). Don’t worry you won’t need this anymore as the new Xbox has built in WiFi: $40 or $50.

If you already have a 250GB hard drive on your unit, GameStop will give you $50 for it. If you have one of the smaller versions they will give you $30 for the 20GB, $35 for the 60GB, and $40 for the 120GB.

You can also trade-in one of your wireless controllers for $25 dollars (wired controller for $20). Throw in a few games to trade-in and it’s not looking so bad now is it?

Grand total (without game trade-in): $200

You will be able to use your Edge card on the accessories and games to get a little bit more, but still, that’s the new Kinect ready Xbox for $100 bucks or less (with game trade-ins and additional accessories making it even less).

On top of the normal trade-in listed above, I plan on trading in a few games I don’t play anymore, my wireless white headset (the new one comes with a black one), my old base 20GB hard drive and I’ll do the 250gb hard drive trade-in later (gotta transfer all of my game saves and information off of it). I will then take that back and get store-credit for a new game. My guesstimate for trade-in will be probably less than $80 out of pocket. I’ll keep you guys updated on the final number since I didn’t get one for free like SOMEBODY here on the site! *cough* MATT! *cough*

You guys going to do the same?

[via Kotaku]

UPDATE - Called around to a few GameStop’s and nobody has them in stock. Looks like the closest opportunity to get my hands on one will be this Friday when the new shipment comes in. Also was told that in order to get the $100 trade in credit you HAVE to pre-order the new Xbox, otherwise they will only give you $50.

UPDATE - I got a call this past Friday, July 9th from my local GameStop that they got in 12 of the new Xbox Slims and one of them had my name on it. After work I quickly went home and dissected my gaming setup to take my existing 360 and accessories in for an exchange. I walked out of there with a new slim. Here’s the breakdown of what all I traded in:

1. Existing Xbox 360 (with 1 controller and A/V cables) - $100 dollars credit
2. Xbox Wireless Headset - $23 credit
3. 20GB Hard drive - $30 credit
4. Six Xbox and PS3 games - $70 credit

I had originally put down $50 as a “reserve fee” in the beginning to put my name on one of the Xbox’s. When I went to go pick up the new unit my final out of pocket amount was $32 dollars. So, add those two together fees and my grand total out of pocket to upgrade to the new Xbox Slim was $82 dollars. Not bad for getting the new hotness.

And let me just say, the new Xbox is sleek, sexy, and I’m very happy with the upgrade. Matt was right though, skimming your finger across the eject button emits a sound of a dying African monkey with AIDS. It just doesn’t sound like something that gorgeous would sound like?

The glossy black finish, the hourglass shape and everything about it just looks great in my cabinet with all of my other gaming systems. It’s whisper quiet and even loads games faster. All in all a great way to get the new Xbox 360 with very little out of pocket. I sure as hell don’t want to go to a store and plop down another $300 dollars.

Finally, if you already have an Xbox 360 with a 250GB hard drive, it’s not worth it. From what I gather Microsoft will not let you transfer content from one 250GB old style hard drive to the new Slim 250 internal hard drive. I am having trouble transferring all of my content because of this. I have tried the transfer cable method, the transfer disc method, and I believe I will have to borrow my buddies old style 360 and transfer my 30 gigs of content using a 2GB flash drive over and over again. Not fun. It’s probably not worth it if I were to do it all over again having run into the problems I am now. I’ll try to post an update after everything is all said and done and give my final thoughts after everything has worked out.