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$1200 Cheap!
Pinky3 writes: "The LA Times is reporting that Microsoft is encouraging retailers to bundle Microsoft games with each XBox. "Beginning next month, many retailers will be requiring customers to pay from $499 to as much as $1,200 to reserve an Xbox console that, like it or not, will come bundled with games, peripherals and warranties. The reason: Microsoft will provide additional marketing money to merchants that agree to include the software giant's games in their bundles. That's because Microsoft's games carry higher profit margins for the Redmond, Wash., company than those published by third-party companies such as Activision Inc. and Electronic Arts Inc.""
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No doubt-- its quite unfair that they do this-- but, again, its not suprising. I, myself, am not going to get an XBox, and this would be further reinforcement to my decision.
No offense to you guys who like the XBox-- but compared to the Gamecube, (which is made by the very experienced Nintendo,) its sorely lacking.
This is not an encouragement to boycott XBox, but i don't think that this sort of thing should be endorsed. Nintendo . as far as i can remember, always let you buy a bare system (which is to say, one without a game) and if you couldn't, you didn't usually pay much more than 40 or so dollars extra. Sega didn't do that, (correct me if i am wrong) and not even Sony. Microsoft is obviously inexperienced in this market, and hopefully they'll learn a lesson with this.
This could go into a whole "why big business is bad" or something, but i don't want it to. Its just an example of how Microsoft is screwing up because of their inexperience in the console market.
Just my two cents =)
This isn't a redundant post; I just set my threshold to 6.
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I'm struggling to think of what else to write... If you don't want to buy the bundle then ... DON'T! Get the unbundled version. Is this that difficult to comprehend? Every other game maker creates bundles which are cheaper than all the components seperately -- why single out MS for this behavi- oh, I forgot, it's MS.
Everyone else does this. To pre-order a Gameboy Advance from EB you had to buy it and 2 games at the same time. I have no doubt it'll be the same way with the new consoles.
Console makers LOSE MONEY on the console itself. They only makem oney on the games. This makes a lot of sense. I'm sure you'll be able to get one without games if you want, just look around.
Console manufacturers have been doing this for years. Nintendo did this most recently with the Gameboy Advanced. It's Standard Operating Procedure. If you don't like it, don't buy it. It's not like you don't have options.
"Loyal Xbox fans will have to dole out hundreds of dollars more than they expected to secure an Xbox," said Geoff Keighley, editor of Gameslice, an online game site.
Loyal Xbox fans? You mean all the ones who bought the previous version of the Xbox and played all the games that came out for it?
Folks, this is really simple: if you don't like the price, then don't buy it! If still you want one, wait a month or two until it drops in price and retailers start selling the base units without all the crap. If you *really* want one and can't wait, then don't complain about getting screwed over.
Game consoles are one area where Microsoft is the newcomer and underdog. They're spending a LOT of money to make sure that the Xbox is a success. If you don't like these sorts of tactics and want them to stop, send them a message by not buying the thing. MS will certainly notice if there's no great demand for their product, despite all their spending on advertising.
Oh wait, it didn't.
Although, OTOH, the NeoGeo is living a new, vibrant life in the wonderful land of Emulation.
But it's not CE based. Operating System: Windows 2000 Kernel, DirectX API
But the Gamecube will support HDTV outta the box, with MS it might be an add-on. Not that I want to help Mario and the Princess pick the most beautiful flowers, so no one crys at the garden party, in HDTV. Still Nintendo...if only I could expect Ikari warriors in stunning HDTV.... Nintendo is what you get when you listen to people who admonish others to "think about the children."
--Jimmy has fancy plans; and pants to match.
On a whim a few weeks ago, I decided to shop around for a Game Boy Advance. Walking around in my local mall, I noticed a bunch of stores had signage up promoting the Advance, but were out of stock. Finally, the EBX had a couple of actual product boxes on display.
Me: Are those Game Boy Advance boxes for real, or are they just boxes?
Salesperson: (very smug) Yes, they're real.
Me: How much?
Salesperson: $200 and up.
Me: (staggered) I'm sorry, what?
Salesperson: Yup. $90 for the Game Boy, plus two games of your choice, plus our accessory kit, plus a two-year extended warranty.
Me: Can I just buy the Game Boy for $90?
Salesperson: No. It's our special package deal.
The following day, I went to a local non-chain place, and they had plenty of Game Boys in stock. I picked one up for $100, no strings attached. Nintendo may not have mandated these "bundles," but just about every chain store latched on.
Don't buy bundles, unless you like to get stuck with all sorts of stuff you don't want.
For more information, click here.
How is it anti-competitive... when the compition did this 12 years ago?
Most slashdotters wouldn't have been around for this so let me give ya'll a history lesson...
When the NES originally came out in the US it was bundled with Super Mario Brothers and Duck Hunt... (two Nintendo produced games)and peripherals (the duck hunter gun) which jacked up the price to cover their loss on hardware. Later a stipped down unbundled package was offered at $50-75 cheaper.
This has happened with every single console to date... the only reason you all are bitching is because it's r33t to bash MicroSoft.
This is a prime example of 'tying', the number one issue the states and DOJ have with Microsoft.
I just bought a "wine-saver" pump last night. (You use it to vacuum air out of half-finished bottle.) It was bundled with 4 proprietary wine-saver corks. These can't be used with any competitor's products. And I sure as hell don't need 4. I'll contact the DOJ about it.
Oh, and I forgot to mention... We're going to buy up half your competitors (at least 5 in the last 2 years), then release new versions of their well-known old titles (Marathon, MechWarrior, etc.) for our new console and bundle those with it at a "discount" so you can't hope to compete with us. Have a nice day.
Now the console game publishers can find out how it feels to be a Microsoft developer. The Behemoth is doing to this industry what it keeps doing to its Windows patners - promising them the world and then slowly screwing them over by bundling competing products and eating away at their market. Why can't one of these companies figure this stuff out?
== Paul Rickard, Editor of The Microsoft Boycott Campaign ====
I bought a car recently (10 days ago). No auto dealership in town had the car I wanted. They were either the wrong color (I wanted black), had the wrong options(there were some things I wanted and sone things I could care less about) or had the wrong transmission. Now, I had a choice. I could buy a car that was very close to what I wanted but was on the lot, or I could order exactly what I wanted from the factory. If I ordered from the factory I would pay full list price. If I bought off the lot I would get a $2000 rebate and be able to haggle the price with the dealer. I ended up paying several thousand dollars less by buying a car with MORE options. I got things I didn't want on my original idea of the car, but they didn't cost me anything in the long run(in fact, they saved me money).
Game systems have ALWAYS been bundled with games, back to when video games were invented. The atari 2600, TI, Nintendo, PlayStation, Sega and every other platform I can think of came bundled with games. My pong game came with pong, and the company was audacious enough to not let me play any other games on it! Computer systems also come bundled with software. That does not mean I think it is right, but it is a common business practice, both in automobiles and computing. That said, I think MS is waaaaay off here if they think anybody is going to pay 2 - 4 times the MSRP of the system to have it bundled with a bunch of stupid games. There is an alternative to PCs bundled with software (build your own computer). There most likely will be retailers that forgo the extra marketing money from MS in order to sell the machines unbundled with games. I think a retailer would make more money overall, although I have no way of knowing how much of a marketing allowance MS is providing. If everone else is selling bundled systems for $600 and you are selling an unbundled system for $300 I think you would have many customers.
Enigma
How is it bad? Customers get some games to start off their systems, and Microsoft gets lots of money from the game developers. Some people might not care for the fact that "the evil company" is "forcing" them to buy these games, but it's just common business sense. That's how companies make money, which is what companies are supposed to do. We don't complain when the free version of Opera "forces" us to look at banners, for example. If enough stores go along with this nonsense, the $299 sticker price for Xbox means nothing, and will end up being a huge boost to the competition. When you buy a car, you don't have to add an extra $1000 for the included yacht.
That's an absurd comparison. A more appropriate comparision might be paying some extra money with your car to get a moon roof, or better sound system, or some other thing. Just because the company involved is Microsoft doesn't mean that their actions must necessarily be evil.
Naked Woman Seeks Sex at Airport
Got Rhinos?
Ever think of it as a Mad Magazine reference?
(They used to always have $x.xx Cheap! next to their prices)
Lower sales for a criminal enterprise is a good thing.
Most market studies show, for the non-geek computer user (which is pretty much the entire PC market) people are tired of:
1) Incremental PC performace increases.
2) Expensive S/W and H/W upgrades every two years.
3) Arrogance on the part of S/W and H/W manufacturers along the lines of "...we deserve access to your pocketbook every two years".
People are tired of these ridiculous PC upgrade cycles.
The market is saturated. Most studies show that everyone who wants a PC already has one, and doesn't want to spend a lot of money on another.
Gaming? The game sales are off, it's lost it's luster. After Columbine, parents want their kids out riding a bike or playing with their friends, not zapping their eyes on lame FPS regurgitation.
Today's PCs are the 8-tracks of the future. Piece of shit boat anchors. $1200 for a throw-away, non-upgradble PC? That will be behind the performance curve the day it's released? In a down economy?
Families who may have just gotten layoff notices are going to send $1200 to a federally convicted monopolist, who is the richest man in the world?
Well, this is America. I guess it might be a big hit.
Treatment, not tyranny. End the drug war and free our American POWs.
See my user info for links.
When you go and auction that new XBox on eBay, will it get pulled because you are including copied of Microsoft software?
Or, if you return the console...will they force you to keep the games because they have been opened (despite the fact that you didn't open them)?
This is really quite a big mess. We have software and we have hardware. When you try to mix the two (unless you are including it free of course!) there are all kinds of sticky devlopments.
- JoeShmoe
-- I wonder which will go down in history as the bigger failure: the War on Drugs or the War on Filesharing
What exactly, though, is the difference between this and any other company that tries to grow and take over its market? The company I work for makes acquisitions on a monthly basis, but they're "growing" instead of "squashing competition."
The difference is that your company doesn't have a monopoly in any of its markets. The reason Microsoft doesn't have the right to expand into other markets by "bundling" is because they are using their monopoly in the operating system market to gain an unfair advantage over other competitors in that market (e.g. Netscape, though that war has been fought and lost). The fight is still being fought over Microsoft's bundling/integration in Windows XP that favors Microsoft and Microsoft-affiliated companies and services (music, financial services, email, streaming media, etc).
However, the bundling we're seeing here in the console market is legal, because MS holds no monopoly in the gaming console market. In fact, since they haven't even released the Xbox yet, they have ZERO market share. They are not using their desktop OS monopoly to enter into the console market, and since they have no monopoly in the console market they are not using it illegally to compete in the console games market.
Moral:
Using your monopoly in one market to force out competition in a different market = anti-competitive.
Bundling as a general practice = pisses off consumers, but not illegal or anti-competitive.
just how many games does it come with?
Define "game". If "a game" is not defined, this number is subject to manipulation: is "Tetris & Dr. Mario" for Super NES one game or two? Worse, the games "Mario Party 2" and "Mario Party 3" for Nintendo 64 each include about 64 minigames. This way, vendors can claim that a $100 N64 console with three extra $30 controllers and $60 Mario Party 3 "Comes with 64 games!"
Will I retire or break 10K?
I don't understand how there can be ``Loyal XBox fans'' when the console hasn't even been released.. What magic pixie dust does Microsoft have in order to get so many people hyped up about their console (which they announced two years in advance of release -- something many companies are not allowed to do)
Here's the thing... let's say Merchant A has the $499 version, and Merchant B has the $1200 version which comes with all kinds of 'neat' toys that M$ thinks we want. Anyone who doesn't want some or all of the toys bundled with the $1200 version is going to go buy the $499 one assuming it's available. I mean, there are several types of games I personally loathe. I can't stand racing or football video games, so if any of those come bundled with the $1200 version (or let's face it, any version) I'm not going to buy it. I'd much rather have the option of buying the bare-bones system and picking up anything else I need as I need it.
M$ thinks it is providing more options, but what they are doing is limiting the number of bare-bones systems by bundling other goods. Doesn't matter if the best game in the world (YMMV) is in there, someone will not like it and go elsewhere. So how does this help the vendors selling the XBOXes? Do they try and buy a couple of each 'version' or do they stick with one and hope to hell it sells?
Am I surprised by M$ doing this? Hell no. They seem to think that they are the best judges of what everyone wants already, so it's not a shock to see them applying this to the XBOX. I'm just wondering how many vendors will end up stripping the bundled stuff out to sell the bare-bones systems to recoup some money. Or do they have the option of sending them back? (I only ask that because in a lot of stores, especially bookstores, product that doesn't sell gets shelved or destroyed...)
Kierthos
Mr. Hu is not a ninja.
"MS is the type of company who as of right now probably knows within +/- 5% what the demand is, what the poor/average/rich person will pay for it, what the average 'early' adopter will pay for it, and what the average late adopter will pay for it."
WHOA! Duude...here are some "ad hoc" "nonofficial" numbers according to a # of my friends up in Rancho Redmond...BEWARE: YMMV...
1. MS' projected demand for W2K is off by around 30%, much/most of this NOT accounted for by the demand inversion
2. MS' projected demand for W/ME was supposedly off by between 30%-40%, and a large factor that (along with a record number of non-projected support problems) led to its being pulled as part of the Official "Upgrade Path"
3. Deployment of AD is ***OVER*** 50% off projection, and is particularly poor with some of MS' historical "early adopters" and "key partners"
4. Demand for the new WinCe is also reportedly well below projection, though no one's mentioned to me a credible sounding number
5. And let's not forget O2K, where demand is alleged 30%-40% below Worst Case, and by rumour, His Billness and His Steveness got "down and dirty" on the O2K marketing team????
While I have no way of certifying the above numbers, the fact is that MS spokesgeeks have acknowledged the above statements without having provided quantities.
you seem to belong to the "MS is God!" School.
MS has historically (like ALL Tech Companies) always overstated intial demand....Windows95 was the one exception to that, and MS ***HASN'T HAD*** a hit like that since, God, what year was W ***95*** again???...though i've had senior Softies tell me that "for sure" W2K was gonna be...it wasn't, it's been the most disappointing Office release in some time..
"I don't expect MS to make the same low-supply mistakes as Sony"
BONUS ROUND: many industry insiders speculated that the PS2 shortage could have been planned/intentional "market manipulation" by Sony trying to enhance both mid-term PS2 demand and beat the amazing amount of media buzz that "Dreamcast" rec'd...some think it could have also been a way to "Pump Prime" the marker in America and freeze Nintendo/Dreamcast sales for a few months????...
Ten quid, she's so easy to blind. And not a word is spoken...
What would have me worried would be Microsoft selling the XBox for $149, paying a $50 trade-in for existing consoles (to reduce the user base), and giving away a bunch of games. All that they are doing with this kind of predatory pricing is convincing parents that their kids can make do with the existing Sony/Sega/Nintendo/whatever console.
Moderators, please note:
use of bold text to emphasize a point
negative portayal of Bill Gates and Microsoft
title not "*BSD is dying"
"fp" does not appear in title or body
prediction of negative outcome for Microsoft
"elite" not spelled "3l33t". "z" not replacing "s" at end of words (e.g., "hackerz")
message not critical of Apple, Linux, or BSD
Taken in total, those things must be worth a karma point or two.
Unfortuantely Microsoft is learning the lessons of 3DO the hard way. When first introduced, the Panasonic 3DO console had a price tag of $800, sans software. At launch there were very few software titles available, and even fewer "must have" games. While Microsoft sems aware that very few people will pay more than $299 for a console machine, bundling these machines with multiple games which may or may not be good is ludicrous. The only reason I can see for bundling a console with a game nowadays (outside of pack-in games) are games that require special controllers like gun-games or driving games. If this isn't their strategy, and Microsoft is just bundling for the ske of bundling, they're in for some stiff competition when the Game Cube arrives, and Sony gears up for ther Christmas promotions.
"When we came up with the program, we wanted it to be what's best for retailers," Microsoft spokesman James Bernard said. "This is based on what retailers told us they wanted."
Hmmm, so the retailers are going to be sitting home with a couple of million X-Boxes playing those lovely bundled games. Oh, wait, the retailers are the middlemen not the customers...
And then Microsoft can talk about how many millions of copies of "Virtual Paint Dyring" they've sold for the X-Box. Watch MS talk up its "Hot Selling" titles without ever mentioning that they were the price of admission.
Pimp: How'd you do??
Whore: Great, and all the guys really love this dress.
Pimp: Hunh? How do you know they like the dress??
Whore: Because I wouldn't sleep with them until they said they liked it.
The saddest part of all of this is that Jane and Joe MidAmerica have gotten too used to being screwed by large corps. and will most likely buy into this BS too. And to be fair, If my kid just wouldn't shut up about the darn thing, I'd probably cave and buy it eventually and principles be damned.
I can think of a relevant little saying that went around the holler when I was a yung'un: Just because there was a shotgun to your head doesn't mean you ain't married.
~Hammy
"Microsoft's games carry higher profit margins for the Redmond, Wash., company than those published by third-party companies such as Activision Inc. and Electronic Arts Inc."
Which is why it's SUICIDE for established game companies to program for the X-Box. Microsoft, in effect, will be using them to kill themselves. We all know that whenever MS enters any market, be it word processors or web browsers, they do it for the sole purpose of leveraging all their other might to "embrace, extend, extinguish" any and all competition. To me, it makes no sense for a game company to waste effort on programming for a rival software company when there are already viable alternatives, like Sony and Nintendo. If they wouldn't do games for X-Box, it will fail.
Fortunately, in the case of game software, MS's own history is against it. Though MS has produced a decent game here and there, they are FAR from the dominant player on the PC platform. This is because to have a megahit game title REQUIRES innovation. The real thing, not that word that MS, in Princess Bride fashion, continues to misuse. MS has always been an imitative, not innovative company.
Even the games that they have had success with (Age of Empires, etc) were imitations of products already on the market. They won't be able to get away with always being months behind whatever is "new and hip" in the console market, ergo, why they need the third party game companies on their side.
Also, it remains to be seen as to whether the X-Box will be a success. Will game console users, who so far are largely BSOD free, tolerate MS bugs? Since the X-Box is running Windows, it's not likely to be any more stable than any other PC running Windows, though the advantage of supporting only ONE hardware configuration will add stability that the average `Doze box won't have.
Which is perhaps what the X-Box has most against it... It's basically a non-upgradable `Doze PC in a game console box. Which means that it will quickly fall behind the conventional PC in power and capability.
=== The price of freedom is eternal vigilance