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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 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.
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!
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
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.'
"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!
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.
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
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.