In order to capture the elusive “I won’t buy a game console if it’s more than $200” market, Microsoft lowered the price of their Arcade bundle to $199 a while back. This is great for poor people and cheapskates in general, but the Arcade system doesn’t contain any external storage at all – no hard drive or memory card.

The Arcade is a perfect fit for you if you enjoy playing games from the very beginning every time you power on. If you want to save your progress, download content, or even just make a gamer profile then you need to buy a memory unit or a hard drive. Which is fine I guess…

The problem is that the new 360 dashboard, launching November 19th, requires 128MB of external storage space. If you’ve got a 360 and no storage devices, you’ll now be eligible for free or cheap storage by entering your serial number and console ID over here.

Arcade owners will get a refurb 20GB HDD and 3 months of Live for $30. Older Core owners will get a 512MB memory unit free or a refurbished 20GB HDD for $20.