Families, Here Comes Your Xbox 360

As the holiday season approaches, imagine the whole family gathered around an Xbox 360. That picture of domestic gaming bliss is undoubtedly in Microsoft's mind, with its release Monday of the Xbox 360 Arcade for families.

At a retail price of $280, this Xbox includes five "family-friendly" games, a wireless controller, an HDMI connection for watching on high-definition TVs, and 250 MB of memory. The five games are Pac-Man Championship Edition, Uno, Luxor 2, Boom Boom Rocket, and Feeding Frenzy.

Bugs and Daffy

Microsoft said it will be offering several family-oriented short films and TV shows for download to the Xbox 360. These include Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck cartoons, as well as more than 300 episodes of Nickelodeon's Blue's Clues, The Backyardigans, and iCarly. Additionally, two family games -- SpongeBob SquarePants Underpants Slam and Shrek-N-Roll -- are available exclusively on the Xbox Life Arcade for downloading.

Microsoft executive Jeff Bell said that, as the holiday approaches, it's a "perfect time" to launch a family Xbox that "plays games, TV shows, and music for everyone to enjoy." Bell called attention to the Family Settings, which allows parents to control what their kids are playing and watching.

Mike Goodman, an analyst with industry research firm Yankee Group, said that the Xbox family edition is the same basic hardware as the regular Xbox 360, but rebundled and remarketed for the family market. "Instead of bundling with Halo 3," he said, Microsoft is bundling it with Pac-Man.

The good news for Microsoft, he added, is that the family version is being presented in such a way that the games are appealing to the casual market. The bad news, he said, is that "the casual market isn't going to pay $280."

Fence-Sitting Parents

The package might well appeal to what Goodman calls the fence-sitting parents who have been resisting their kids' requests...