It's a sad fact of life that games for the Xbox 360 will not be cheap. Though no official software price point for the console has yet been announced, every online retailer is taking game preorders for the platform at $59.99 a pop. That's on top of the $399 for the tricked-out 360 (which is the smarter buy) and the thousand-plus dollars for the HDTV and A/V setup required to take full advantage of the console.

　　This week, though, a major industry player predicted that gamers will soon be able to save money for a change. Speaking to the Bank of America Investment Conference in San Francisco, Activision CEO Robert Kotick told the audience that in 2006, "You're likely to see price declines on the older-generation software."

　　Unfortunately for current-generation holdouts, Kotick also said that publishers will quickly shift their development efforts away from today's consoles, which has been the case in the past, when the introduction of the PlayStation 2, Xbox, and GameCube games saw PlayStation and Nintendo 64 development plummet. "I'm a pretty big believer that history is likely to repeat itself," he said.

　　In other next-generation console and Activision-related news, Kotick said the company plans on 4 games for the Xbox 360 during its 2006 fiscal year, including its anticpated free-roaming Western, Gun.