Here’s a new name to note – David Cole of DFC Intelligence. He may have a long way to go before he’s as ubiquitous as Wedbush Morgan’s reliably quotable analyst, Michael Pachter, but he’s certainly starting out on the right foot.

This is the first time we’ve heard from the fella, but he’s already predicting that Microsoft will follow Sony with a ‘Slim’ new design for the Xbox 360. It’ll arrive next year too, as he tells industrygamers.com:

“I think it is a question of when not if. However, the when part is a big uncertainty … rumors have been going on for a long time. I think people were asking me the same question last year at this time. As cost efficiencies allow smaller and more reliable is always a good thing. However, you also have something like Project Natal which could also tie in with hardware redesigns.

“There are a lot of questions Microsoft must weigh internally and there are always going to arguments on both sides of the fence around timing. So I don’t know, but in our DFC forecasts we anticipated a major redesign in 2010….so I guess that was our bet.”

So there you have it, the wise words of yet another gamesbiz analyst. Who amongst us could have the incredible powers of foresight to predict the same? Oh yeah, all of us…

But how likely is a redesigned 360, really? It seems to us that the current models are cheap enough already – perhaps cheaper still if MS brings the 120GB ‘Elite’ price to under £200, as is rumoured. With all that in mind, will Microsoft really want to spend a bunch of extra cash re-engineering and redesigning the 360 to make it even more affordable? Perhaps not, but the success of PS3 Slim will surely influence their thinking one way or another. Let’s wait and see what develops…