Hello,

I'm looking at purchasing an Xbox 360 to use to gain some experience with console development. Can anyone recommend a specific model or know of any good tuts for getting started with this endeavor?

For those interested this link on the MSDN has all the information on this topic http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb975643.aspx

X360 was one of the very rare systems that allowed unlicensed 3rd party development. There is a $100 annual cost, but that is easily waived for many reasons, including being a student.

As you discovered by following up with the MSDN link, the sanctioned way to do your own X360 development is to use XNA Game Studio.

XNA is effectively a wrapper around the tools. They are mostly DX9 era tools, which is why so many people decry that "XNA is Dead". Don't worry when you hear that XNA is not being changed; they also are not modifying the X360 functionality.