(AP)Microsoft Corp.’s Xbox 360 video game console will be $50 cheaper starting Wednesday, confirming fuzzy snapshots of leaked advertisements posted by bloggers in late July.

The company said its most popular console, which comes with a 20-gigabyte hard drive, will cost $349.

A basic console without a hard drive or wireless controllers will retail for $279, $20 less than its current price, while the Xbox 360 Elite, a black version with a 120-gigabyte hard drive and high-definition video support, will drop $50 to $449.

In July, the company clipped the price of its add-on HD-DVD player to $179, from $199.

Microsoft has been dodging questions about a console price cut since competitor Sony Corp. slashed the price of its 60-gigabyte PlayStation 3 to $499, from $599, in early July. Nintendo Corp.’s Wii, the least expensive of the so-called next-generation consoles, costs $250.

Last week, spokespeople for Wal-Mart Stores Inc., Toys “R” Us Inc. and Microsoft all refused to say whether blurred images found online purportedly showing weekend ad circulars reflecting the price cuts were authentic.

Aaron Greenberg, a group product manager for Xbox 360, said in an interview Monday that the ads were real.

Greenberg also said competitors’ prices had no impact on Microsoft’s decision.

“In fact, we had this in our plans from the very beginning,” he said, and added that the timing was linked to the release of several highly anticipated video games, including “Madden NFL 08,” which hits retail shelves next Tuesday.

“There is nothing too shocking about this,” said Michael Gartenberg, an analyst at JupiterResearch. He said it’s normal for companies to cut console prices between one and two years after launch.

The analyst added that the $50 price cut will bring in a whole new group of customers who ruled it out at the higher price, and that Microsoft should enjoy increased sales immediately even though the official holiday shopping season is still months away.

Microsoft also said Tuesday that the green and gold “Halo 3″-themed console, will go on sale in September for $400.

Citibank («www.businessweek.com») pitched an offer at Ohio State University that few college students would refuse: free food. A company hired by the bank plastered the Columbus campus with advertisements for free sandwiches at a local haunt, «investing.businessweek.com», and free burritos from La Bamba restaurant. The only catch? Students had to submit a credit-card application before any free food crossed the counter.

The food-for-credit application scheme caught the attention of Ohio’s attorney general, Marc Dann, who sued Citibank on Sept. 19, alleging that the campus advertisements violated the state’s consumer-protection laws. Dann has partnered with students and professors at Ohio State’s Moritz College of Law to prosecute the suit, which accuses Citibank of using bait-and-switch advertising, failing to clearly state conditions of the offer, and tempting students with a prize without disclosing all the conditions. The suit seeks more accountability in credit-card marketing practices. “Citibank is starting out the marketing deceptively and banking on the fact that these kids won’t read the fine print,” Dann says.

Citibank maintains that it never condoned the advertising, which was carried out by «investing.businessweek.com», a Pennsylvania company the bank hired to market its cards. Citibank is now pursuing its own investigation of the ad. “The practices alleged in the complaint are not approved Citibank practices and if true, they were not condoned nor authorized by Citibank,” says company spokesman Sam Wang. Campus Dimensions did not return calls seeking comment. Affinity Deals Escape Scrutiny

As concern over student debt levels rises, lawmakers and campuses nationwide have turned their attention to credit-card issuers and marketing practices aimed at students. California, Oklahoma, and Texas recently passed laws restricting credit-card marketing on public campuses, joining 15 other states that already had such restrictions in place. In California, credit-card marketers can’t lure students with free gifts; in Oklahoma, colleges can no longer sell student information for credit-card marketing purposes; and in Texas, on-campus credit-card marketing was curtailed, permitting marketing only on limited days and in certain locations.

However, beyond the recent legislation, another type of state-sanctioned credit-card marketing escapes serious scrutiny: affinity card contracts and marketing. Virtually every major university boasts a multimillion-dollar affinity relationship with a credit-card company. Under these deals, the university can receive $10 million or more in exchange for offering credit-card companies exclusive access to students, alumni, and professors at school athletic events. In some cases, the deals require schools to provide student e-mail addresses and phone numbers to the card-issuing bank. As state funding shrinks for public universities, such deals grow.

These deals provide a steady income stream for the university, but at what cost to students? Consumer advocates argue that these contracts allow schools to profit from student debt. In many cases, universities actually get a cut of overall charges on the school-backed card, raising questions about conflicts and whether schools negotiate the best deals for student and alumni.

What’s more, typically the worse a card’s financial terms are for students and alumni, the bigger the profit for the school. These deals potentially weaken schools’ ability to protect students from aggressive marketing tactics, high interest rates, onerous debt loads, and deceptive billing practices. “You have to wonder whether the university is doing everything they can to reduce student debt, when there is a clear financial conflict of interest,” says Travis Plunkett, legislative director for the Consumer Federation of America (consumerfed.org). Diane Wagner, a Bank of America («www.businessweek.com») spokeswoman, says that 98% of affinity card holders are alumni and other nonstudents. “There are real benefits to the cardholder including reward points and cash-back bonuses,” Wagner says. “Alumni are showing pride in their schools by becoming cardholders.” She declined to comment on whether the cards pose a conflict of interest.

SUMMER, and the silly season is upon us, so here’s a silly thing. Rumours were rife that Highland Council was going to rename the Isle of Skye, calling it Chechnya, or something like that. In fact, the councillors anxiously re-assure us, it’s only the council ward that is being renamed, and not the island as such. A pretty fine distinction.

No doubt the councillors realised that there’s actually quite a lot in a name. Skye is mine, in a way, just as much as theirs, but they didn’t consult me. It seems the advance of aggressive Gaelicism is becoming unstoppable.

How would we feel if the Edinburgh Council decided to call their city Drumsheugh, or another random name? Would only voting residents have the right to object?

I was in Torridon a week or so back doing some hillwalking. I climbed eight Munros, six of which have a Gaelic name I can neither pronounce nor remember. Fair enough - those are the names of the hills, and always have been. I gazed across to the Cuillin ridge, noting the bonnie boats, speeding, like birds on the wing, over the sea to Chechnya.

Driving around Wester Ross you can’t help but notice the road signs, all expensively renewed in English and Gaelic. You can head for Inverness or, if you prefer, Inbhir Nis. I have a feeling this is a reverse transliteration. The prefix “inver” derives from the Gaelic “inbhir”, but I doubt if Inbhir Nis ever existed before Inverness. Who benefits from this nonsense? Certainly not the motorist, who finds the duality confusing. Whatever else may be true, this practice is not about improved clarity of direction. There are about four people left in Scotland who speak only Gaelic. They don’t drive around that much, and anyway, if they were motorists, would put clear signs before political propaganda.

Which is what this is. As often, Holyrood is the brooding presence which has encouraged such chauvinism. I have said before that law makers like to make laws. The firebrand ex-MSP Mike Watson came up with the Gaelic Language (Scotland) Act. This has established, wait for it, the Brd na Gidhlig, in effect a teuchters’ quango, with a budget of millions. Ominously it states its principal statutory objective as “securing the status of the Gaelic language as an official language of Scotland commanding equal respect to the English language”.

Can you believe this? I have been to Quebec, where the language war has been raging, with far greater statistical justification, for centuries. They have laws there which call for the death penalty to anyone who sells hot dogs without simultaneously peddling chiens chaud. I’m not kidding here - well, maybe slightly about the death penalty. But in Paris they happily sell “le hot-dog.” Paternalistic, invasive legislation breeds absurdity, not progress.

This silly Act will not achieve its purpose. It can’t, because you can’t bring a dead thing to life. Instead it will give us the bureaucratic bullying and wasteful expenditure now being shown by Highland Council. I visited the website of the Brd na Gidhlig. Its aim is chaos. It says it wants an increasing number of Gaelic speakers and learners making Gaelic their language of preference in the home, community and workplace. Take the workplace: new trouble is brewing for employers. You have a Gaelic speaker on your staff. He expresses a preference to communicate in that language, and refuses to use his native English. You sack him. He tribunals you, funded by a rampant Bord na Gaidhlig; represented by an unctuously angry solicitor. In no time the Brd will be demanding in-house Gaidhlig translators for all employers. Today it’s Inbhir Nis. Tomorrow the world.

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