Xbox Price To Shadow PS2, Not GameCube

Thanks to Reuters for their story indicating Microsoft won't necessarily act on Nintendo hardware price reductions. Xbox boss Robbie Bach, in a Tokyo news conference, suggested "...the company's main benchmark when it comes to pricing would remain Sony... and not Nintendo", and added "We've been selling at a price premium to GameCube since the first day and I don't think that's going to change." Elsewhere in the news conference, Bach talked about the long-term growth of consoles, estimating that "...video games have a penetration rate of about 40 percent, but that rate can grow to 80 percent over the next decade if games become more appealing to a wider audience."

Comments

Re:Gamecube losing relevance?

[psyco484]

I'm about to buy a gamecube simply because it's $100 and I definitely couldn't justify it before, seeing as how I would play maybe five or six games at the most. I can't justify dropping $50 everytime a game comes out for one, especially when that game might be buggy, and unplayable. But, there are games that I've played for the Gamecube that I really like and think it's worth it, so $100 to play those games isn't that much of a burden. I still can't justify dropping that much money on an Xbox since most Xbox games I'd play end up on the pc anyway, and at least on the pc I can get patches if they're needed (I'm not about to drop another $xx a month/year to be able to do this through Xbox live)

I think you're mainly right about people people not really caring about 3rd party games as much for the Gamecube, except I can't say I've noticed much, if any, difference in quality between the Xbox, PS2, or Gamecube. Though it cold easily have been the different TVs I was playing it on, but Soul Caliber 2 looked smoother playing on the Gamecube than it did on the Xbox. It probably was just the TV or something, but even still, assuming the actual quality is equal if you standardize a testing environment, the price difference is more than enough to pickup a copy of the game for the Gamecube. Then there's that whole controller thing. I haven't used an Xbox controller that I've liked yet, and I've used what I think are the three main ones. The Gamecube one is just much easier to work with. Can't really argue about the PS2 controllers though.

While this definitely isn't a death to the Xbox, when I go to the store and see $99 for the system that can play the games I can't play on my PC, and $150 for the system that can play most of the games I can play on my PC, plus hundreds more I could care less about, the choice isn't exactly hard to make. Microsoft has been used to being on top and being able to dictate prices for their products because there typically hasn't been too much commercial competition. They've made their software the standard and they're only just starting to lose that position. Console gaming is completely different than selling operating systems and word processors since their main market knows they have a choice and you don't have to learn how to use a Gamecube, because it's just not really any different from any other console. Microsoft doesn't seem to understand that they can't just dictate market price when they have competition unless their competition is in on it too. They're going to start losing market share even more if they keep up with their current mentality. As it stands, I can't find many things that the Xbox offers as unique. It had Halo, but guess what my friend is going out to buy later today for his PC?

Consumers will throw money at what they want, but most consumers who either don't know the difference, or just don't care, are going to pick up the cheaper of the two, that's common sense. MS is either going to have to make a real reason for owning their system, or start being competitive, if they want to do well.