203w ago - According to Arstechnica's favorite inside source, a price drop is coming to both the Sony PS3 and Microsoft XBox 360 consoles this fall.

To quote: Since we can't name the source, we're treating all this information as rumor, but the Mole's reputation in the industry for breaking large stories and outstanding track record for accuracy speaks for itself.

The 80GB model is going to see some serious hardware constraints in the weeks ahead, and retailers have about 60 days worth of inventory before the systems will become hard to find. Expect to see many more 160GB units on store shelves.

Those units have no constraints yet, but if the retailers sell through that supply as quickly as they did the 80GB, Sony is in a good place for the final part of its plan in 2009: dropping the price of hardware and launching the PS3 Slim in the fall.

Expect the Xbox 360 Pro to disappear in July or August, but you're going to see some solid bundles to get those systems moving off store shelves. The Halo 3/Fable 2 bundle the Mole previously tipped us off to shows that Microsoft is willing to put some good games into the box to get people buying.

So what are we going to do without...

239w ago - Forget everything you may or may not know about Square Enix's The Last Remnant. Forget about how it's the latest and greatest 360 RPG from Japan, and how it uses Unreal Engine 3 for its graphics, and how it's coming out in about a month (PS3 owners will have to wait longer).

No, the real story behind this game, the one that has been dreadfully underreported on so far, is that you use this mole-like thing to help you dig for weapon-building material. Look out, Western developers!

"Mr. Diggs" might sound like the name of some minor-league baseball team's mascot, but he's actually a helpful armored mole-like thingie who aids the hero Rush and his friends in gathering item creation material. Sending him out to specially marked points on the game costs you D-ACT (digging action?) points, but will likely result in material you can bring over to the nearest customization shop and use to enhance or create weapons.

Digging operations may randomly produce huge payoffs, or may result in "accidents" of varying types -- sometimes they'll be the happy kind that replenish D-ACT or repel monsters, sometimes they'll result in monsters swarming over you. That's how things go in Remnant-land.

Perhaps more interesting then TLR's mole-oriented weapon system is its command-based battles, which are...