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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.
I think their adverts are not that subtle either: one of them runs along the "nice way to die" line. Maybe a 240 volts escaping through a programming hole?
OS/2 - because choice is a terrible thing to waste.
I wonder if the components are integrated inside, or can you start ripping things out. At $200 It might be worth it to start selling the stuff inside for money. Anyone out there know?
Arathres
stainless steel
I dont believe they were complaining that it wouldnt run Linux, they were saying that it would be a "killer app" so to speak if it HAD an OS; with it there would be no other computer equipment needed for a family-solution. Don't be so quick to flame. ;)
I thought I read that you can't dump a product on market in EU. That is, they can't sell it for less than the manufacturing costs. Apparently Xbox had at least an extra 100 on the price. For the new cost (299) it'd be almost worth it just for a DVD player.
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.
The users that were overkeen and bought one before the price cut (I think there were eight of them) wil be compensated:
"Those who have already bought the console at the higher price will, luckily, be compensated. Anyone who already has an Xbox, or buys one before April 25th, will receive two free games and a free controller"
The secret of success is honesty and fair dealing. If you can fake those, you've got it made. (Marx)
How to kill Microsoft
Step 1) Earn $400 billion
Step 2) Buy 1 billion X-boxes and use them as computers, without buying any games
Step 3) Watch as Microsoft begins to collapse upon itself since it loses money on each unit!
Step 4) Tell all your buddies that Microsoft is dying and that they should switch to the superior Linux OS
Step 5) Play Tux Racer
Step 6) Repeat step 5
You have completed the six step program. Microsoft is now dead! Have a nice day!
> it would be a handy thing in the living room if it ran a real OS.
Why would it matter what OS it runs? If it used Linux instead, it wouldn't suddenly have more functionality. It wouldn't suddenly have the ability to open your curtains or turn on your coffee machine. It already does what it's supposed to do: play games.
No console game player should ever care what OS their game system uses.
(I wonder if the Indrema never came to light because they expected gamers to manually mount the DVD drive before playing each game.)
I've been planning on buying a GameCube for quite a while now, infact I pre-ordered (May 17th launch in Australia, I don't want one enough to spend $AU1000 importing, blah blah etc) several months ago.
As far as I recall, the launch price for the GameCube in Australia is going to be $399. Whenever I've told people that price, then compared to the $799 Xbox, people would be shocked. Then they'd realise they could get a GameCube and a couple of games for the same price as a gameless Xbox. I know first-hand of a couple of people that have held back and waited for a GameCube because of this.
All well, there'll be two interesting things to observe from this: Nintendo's reaction, and early Xbox adopters' reactions.
I wonder if Nintendo will drop their GCN launch price now? To be honest, I don't think they have much of a choice if they want to remain competitive. As for the Xbox owners: They get what they deserve! Err, seriously though, I bought a Nintendo 64 on March 7th 1997 (a week after the launch in Australia) for $399. 3 months later, the price dropped to $299. Nintendo had a very quiet promotion of "free game for early adopters". It's where my copy of Mario Kart 64 is from.
I wonder if Microsoft will do the same now?
If I were Michael Dell or Ted Waitte (Gateway), I would be on 'red alert', so to speak. Microsoft are literally giving hardware away and establishing themselves with a box in every living room. An XBox upgrade kit in the future (with a USB keyboard and mouse, maybe throw in WindowsXBox and a lite version of XBox Office) and suddenly you have proprietry hardware running a proprietry OS. Future versions of desktop Windows will have terrible driver support or hardware crippling commands for Dells and Gateway, making them seem slower, while uncrippled Xbox drivers will run at normal speed (which will seem very fast for normal users).
Microsoft are positioning themselves to be a hardware company, muscling Dell and Gateway out the PC business. The next M$ monopoly will be on PC hardware. A one stop solution, so to speak - Microsoft will supply the OS, hardware and software.
Revolution = Evolution
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
Which is pretty crazy considering that PAL actually gives you a better picture than NTSC.
Microsoft - Where would you like to go today, Maybe Jail?
How can you be bound by a EULA at the time you buy something? (I'm honestly just curious. It would seem that the EULA could have no effect on where you buy something, because you hadn't agreed to it at that point. Am I wrong?)
How can we continue to believe in a just universe and freedom to eat crackers if we have no ale?
I've had two spam faxes in the office today (we never get spam faxes here, so thats significant in itself)
The gist of them is that if I sign up for an MSCE course I'll get a free X-Box
It shows every sign of a truly desperate company trying to shift stock, and certainly makes it look like the X-Box is a tacky trinket.
'There is a Light that never goes out.'
Danny.
I have written over 900 book reviews
"With a fast CPU, wizzy graphics card, ethernet, DVD and TV out"
A game console with tv out? Amazing, it's bound to sell like hotcakes with innovation like this.
1.) The idea that the Microsft would turn the Xbox into a PC? Do you know how hard they have worked to make sure people _DONT_ perceive the Xbox as a PC? Not only would this piss off hardware vendors but it would land them in legal trouble instantly. I don't care what arguement you may have - you will _never_ see the XBox performing as a PC.
2.) XBox as a DVR (or TiVo type device). Well, considering there currently isn't a TV input for the XBox I dont think this will happen. I suppose they could feed video via ethernet over broadband but this would be insane. Again, the changes of MS doing something like this is next to nothing.
3.) Chances are if the XBox does fail - its dead. Yes Microsoft has put tons of money behind the Xbox but that doesn't mean they have to keep supporting it if its a loser. Look at UltimateTV - Microsoft put a lot behind that and while they are still providing support for their existing customer base they certainly aren't pushing the product anymore.
I own an XBox, a PS2 and a Dreamcast. In every market some products win, some fail - not everyone can win. The Xbox hasn't even been out a year yet and everyone is expecting its demise - I would have to give the product at least a year from now to more properly speculate what its life will be like. Only time will tell. The best we can hope for if the Xbox fails is that by some grace of god M$ gives regular users what they need to 'hack' the box. Fat chance.
As for the MS Hate talk:
While Slashdot is website built for a community -the boring, redundant "M$ Sucks, M$ is Evil" rhetoric gets really boring, redundant and repetitive. Yes everyone has an opinon but the "Me too!" posts suck - Everyone knows you hate them so shut up already.
-
aphex
I Steal Music!
Many of the console games in development at the moment are planned for release on all three consoles. The launch titles for the X-Box are pretty uninspiring, but it's early days yet.
Microsoft are in a much better position than they'd have been in if Sony had used their extra year of time with the PS2 on the market effectively.
Personally I'm leaning toward buying a Gamecube. This change in price brings the X-Box down to the same price, but I just prefer Nintendo's style (and franchise characters).
Having 3 consoles on the market is doing great things as far as I'm concerned, as a gamer. When you can develop a game for one of two systems, often you'll only do one. But if sticking to one system cuts you out of a large portion of the market, you're more likely to develop for them all.
..and I'll form the head!!
Hoorays for lowering the price of the Xbox unit itself, but what about the games? As a PC gamer enthusiast, the relatively high price of Xbox games at around 100 euros makes me think twice before buying this...thing into my living room. Sure, it's also a DVD player, but most of all, it's a game console, obviously.
I mean, what fun is it, if I have to think about my budget for the whole month when buying a game? I don't want my game buying decision to be a well-thought, rational financial decision, but instead I just want to think whether this game will be entertaining me enough in order to justify the amount of money I'm giving away for it.
The high price of the games takes that fun away, and atleast for me, the Xbox remains on the shelf at the local store, waiting for those game prices to come down.
And really, don't start with that piracy thing and how it really justifies the high price. It doesn't.
__
Zarathustra.fi
Modern man has no goal, no aim, no ideals.
If the also brought the price of the games down to A$29.95 then I'd cave in and buy one. It's easy to resist a cheap console when the games are so damn expensive. I think I'll drop by a pawnbroker on the way home from work and see what the average price for a secondhand Xbox game is at the moment...
It will be interesting to see what Sony does in response. It's seems clear that they will drop prices in response but the question is how much. The way I see it Sony basically has 2 options. First they can drop their price a bit. Keep their profit margins and try and wait it out hoping the X-box doesn't get too big. Or they can respond with their one big price cut and try and hurt MS bad enough to force them out of the market for good. If Sony is able to force MS out of the consol market that is a huge boon for them because that destroys their major competition, right now Sony is very established in that market and I dno't see them giving any ground without a big fight. MS on the other hand has a lot of cash in the bank (I heard someone say it could run for another 10 years without another dime of revenue?!?) and they have a lot of other interests involved with the sucess of X-box (MS in the living room), it will be interesting to see how far MS decides to stick it out. I think the question is how far will this price war go, I can't see MS dropping the price much more but they are ruthless. If Sony doesn't do something big I think X-box is here to stay, MS ain't cashing in their chips at this point and there will be some very heavy competion in the consol market. It will be very interesting to see what kind of response Sony makes to this price cut. We could end up with anything from a Sony-MS split in consols to a corporate game of chicken.
I stole this Sig
Now you get their systems too. 3 systems for 200 dollars... Score!
/^[A-Z0-9._%+-]+@[A-Z0-9.-]+\.[A-Z]{2,4}$/i
I am quite certain that you are not allowed to sell for less than manufacturing costs in the EU.
A few weeks ago, I read an article about MS wanting to cut the prices on xbox, but that EU threatened to take them to court if they did. Now, just a few weeks later, they do it anyway and not a single word about that law is heard. I smell some heavy lobbying.
Opinions stated are mine and do not reflect those of the Illuminati
Dumb flamer. We're supposed to run Linux on everything. Just yesterday I successfully ported KDE 3.0 to my shoelaces. Still working on the doorstop distribution. Soon I'll be able to sed my lawn. Ph34r.
"Killer app" means "killer application," which in turn implies some use of a technology that is desired by a lot of people, and not easily satisfiable otherwise. Even if you did install a general-purpose OS on your video game console and hooked it up to a TV, what do you have? Pretty much just a PC hooked up to a TV, which in itself is not all that exciting; it certainly doesn't demonstrate a "killer app." TiVo has a killer app, IMO, but the important part there is the monthly directory service and the software interface.
Karma: Good (despite my invention of the Karma: sig)
Microsoft is looking at long term goals with the XBox, I don't think anyone thought the XBox would overtake teh PS2 for more reasons then I care to name here but if Microsoft were to release a backwards compatible XBox 2 and 3 with revamped hardware and additional network features they may have a chance to gain market share.
Saying Java is nice because it works on all OS's is like saying that anal sex is nice because it works on all genders.
The DVD is probably all proprietary stuff - since it supposedly can spin both ways.
This urban legend has been applied to several video game systems. It's probably not true. It originated from the fact that some of the systems start from the outside of the disc and go in, as opposed to regular CDs and DVDs that start from the inside and go out. The PS2 and Xbox both have their boot sectors on the second layer of the DVD, which is typically written starting at the outside.
Will I retire or break 10K?
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.
One thing I find interesting is that I've repeatedly heard the argument that Microsoft can just throw money at XBox until it succeeds. The whole first-iteration-sucks but the third-one-will-be-good thing Microsoft is famous for.
I don't buy it.
The XBox looks likely to fail. It's getting its ass whipped everywhere but America, and even here the GameCube has started to outsell it despite no strong releases on the GameCube side. When Resident Evil, Zelda, Mario, Metroid, Eternal Darkness, and Star Fox Adventures hit the GameCube (supposedly all this year), Microsoft will need to have some damned strong support on their side to survive just in North America. And, barring some big surprises being revealed at E3, it doesn't look like they have too many great games coming, at least not that will stand up to Zelda and Mario. In any case, no matter how they do here, I think it's very likely that Japan, Europe, and Australia are lost causes.
Suppose they do fail utterly -- they have to discontinue the XBox because people aren't buying it. Now, this is Microsoft, so of course they go back to the drawing board and release the even-more-powerful XBox 2. Twice as powerful as the Playstation 3, say, and a bit cheaper. Sounds great, right? Microsoft can just keep shoveling these things into the market until one of them sticks, the same way they've done with everything else.
Well, no. Firstly, Microsoft's first-party games won't support the XBox 2 by itself. Nintendo is the only game company in the world that can pull that trick off. So the XBox 2 will need third-party support in order to have any games at all, and without games nobody will buy the system, no matter how powerful it is.
Even after the XBox failure, many PC game companies might be willing to port their stuff to the XBox 2 for a quick buck. But can you imagine *anybody* developing exclusive software for the XBox 2, after the complete and utter failure of the XBox? Well, it's not impossible, but the XBox 2 would have to have a lot going for it in order to attract any third-party game companies. The Japanese third-parties, in particular, would be unlikely to touch the thing after the obvious failure of the first. They're leery enough dealing with the first one, and only tremendous work on Microsoft's part got any Japanese support at all.
I'm well aware that Microsoft has deep pockets and can afford to buy game companies outright in order to force them to develop for the XBox 2 -- but that's not the point. They've already bought Bungie, and shovelled money at others, and it doesn't seem to be making a hell of a lot of difference. They need to fix the problem *now*, or it will be far, far more expensive to try to salvage the XBox 2. Microsoft isn't stupid -- they are perfectly well aware that unless they succeed now, it will be *really* expensive to try to make a comeback.
In my view, if the XBox fails, it's all over for Microsoft's game console business. It will be really tough to buy back consumer and third-party confidence after the fiasco that looks to be shaping up.
ZFS: because love is never having to say fsck
Nintendo responded by dropping the GameCube's launch price to $AU329.
Hurrah, etc.