Anyone buying a new Xbox 360 Arcade should try to get their hands on one with the Jasper motherboard, as it's now been officially confirmed by Microsoft that the new Arcade models come with 256MB of onboard memory.

The main reason for the upgrade is, of course, the NXE or New Xbox Experience, as this needs 256MB to be installed to. This should allow the UI to run faster than off a hard drive or storage card and it means you don't have to waste that space on your storage device just to take advantage of the new slicker UI.

The statement from Microsoft is somewhat cryptic, stating that "We can confirm that we are moving to internal memory for the Xbox 360 Arcade. The physical internal memory is the same size as the previous external memory units - 256MB." So, rather than getting a measly 8MB of internal flash, you get 256MB, but you can't save your games now, as you don't seem to be getting a memory card with the new Arcade units.

It all seems a little bit odd, but then again, you can still get a deal on a free 512MB memory card or a cheap 20GB hard drive upgrade from Microsoft in a lot of places around the world, so overall this might still not be such a bad deal.

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