Price cuts are a natural part of any gadget’s life cycle, and this generation of video game consoles may just be inching towards their inevitable tipping point. Sony might not have played this game for now, since it instead unveiled a redesigned ultra-slim PlayStation 3, but Microsoft has went ahead with a respectable price cut for its Xbox 360.

CVG reports that retailers have taken delivery of their holiday 2012 stocks of the Xbox 360, which enjoys a $50 discount over its original list price. With Black Friday coming up, it’s a pretty good bet that these consoles would start being available around that time.

Interestingly, the bundles aren’t as cut-and-dried as one would originally expect. There are two options for the cheapest, $249.99 bundle: one will pack a 250GB hard drive, while the other will have a paltry 4GB of storage space. This could mean that at the bottom end, buyers could have a choice between having the larger internal storage or including Kinect.

The higher-tier bundle is a substantially easier sell: it costs $349.99, and would have a 250GB hard drive and Kinect included inside the box. Aside from a three-month subscription to Xbox Live Gold, this package would also include Kinect Adventures and Carnival Games as pack-in games.

With many analysts expecting the next-generation Xbox to arrive sometime next year, this holiday season could be the Xbox 360’s last hurrah. The price cuts could reflect an effort to make a tidy profit as the console’s life cycle ticks down, as well as a bid to parry Nintendo’s advances, since its next-generation Wii U debuts next month.