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Xbox Price Drops For Australia And Europe
wallitron writes: "Due to slow sales in Australia, Microsoft is looking to drop the price of it's XBox to $399 (around $200US). With a fast CPU, wizzy graphics card, ethernet, DVD and TV out, it would be a handy thing in the living room if it ran a real OS. At that price it seems good value. Check out the article on the price drop." There are price drops in Europe, too.
Actually, J Allard the head of MS' digital entertainment division (in charge of xBox) stated in a wired interview prior to the unit's release that he wanted to move prices down fairly rapidly, "to get the retail price to $100 as quickly as possible."
This may be a little faster than they had hoped to lower the price, but MS knows it's gonna take heavy losses to get the market penetration required to start making serious money on the software.
M$ was already selling at a hefty loss (for some reason $100-$200 dollars comes to mind, but I'm not certain). This is standard practice in the console industry, though: sell the console as a loss-leader to make up profits in software royalties. Sony does it. Nintendo does it (though to a lesser extent). They were already basically dumping the XBoxes, and now they're trying to avalanche them.
Hopefully they get sued, and are forced to sell at cost >:).
BlackGriffen
Week 4/8-4/14, Japan Hardware Sales
* PS2: 55,000 units (total this year: 1,323,000)
* GBA: 31,000 units (total this year: 969,000)
* GameCube: 10,000 units (total this year: 510,000)
* PS1: 3,000 units (total this year: 74,000)
* WonderSwan: 2,000 units (total this year: 11,330)
* Xbox: 1,800 units (total this year: 169,000)
* Dreamcast: 1,500 units (total this year: 12,000)
(from IGN)
"Reality is just a convenient measure of complexity" -Alvy Ray Smith
Danny.
I have written over 900 book reviews
The anti-dumping regulations are there to protect nascent european industry from foreighn competitors segregating markets and dumping excess capacity. Consequently your comment makes no sense at all. Europe doesn't have a console industry to protect, and the cost of Xboxes is now comparable with other geographical regions, so it is not possible to argue that the practise is dumping.
"The new wave is not value-added; it's garbage-subtracted" - Esther Dyson, Dec 1994
I can tell you exactly why MS has dropped the price of the XBox here in OZ.
They are shit-scared of the Nintendo GameCube. Nintendo has been running a HUGE marketing campaign here in OZ. There about about 4 or 5 commercials for the GameCube every night on all three major TV stations. Not to mention Print and Radio. I have seen a total of ONE TV commercial for the XBox. The GC isn't even due til May 17th!.
Guess how much the GC is going to be when it is released. Yep... AUS$399. Funny that.
(This is also completely ignoring the fact that the XBox is so damn big, and the controller is just wrong.)
To be perfectly honest, I would love to see Sony and Nintendo drop their prices to AUS$199. This would basically wipe the XBox off the face of the planet.