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Microsoft to Cut XBox Price to $149?
BjB writes "According to a Dow Jones Newswire article, Microsoft plans on lowering the price of the XBox to $149 (from $179) at the beginning of April. This is to compete with the PlayStation 2, which currently remains at $179."
I may have to finally get one at that price. Not to play games of course.. I'd use it as a MythTV frontend.
Nintendo should follow MS's lead and drop the game cube to 70 bucks. That would be gangsta tight.
-Dipster
As the article mentions, Sony is going to have their hand forced by Microsoft's move and the PS2 will drop to the same price point by E3.
Which means in a few months anyone will be able to stroll into their local store and buy all three major consoles for the same price ($400 give or take a few dollars) as the Current Hotness Video Card (ATI 9800XT).
Supposedly the specs for the Nextbox come out next week. I'm very, very interested in seeing what they will be doing with that. I hope that they don't get onto a 'low-price' kick, and skimp on the specs to come in with a $199 console at release. I really don't mind paying the extra $100.
Are we now in the 'golden age' of software for the current crop of consoles? Is this the time where the number of users has reached critical mass, allowing developers to pour more dollars into games, knowing that there is a huge base of customers? But- just before they start holding back on development of new games for the current generation, waiting for the next one?
I'd like to think that we'll at least have a good bunch of games up to this next Christmas. After that we can sit around and wait for the next generation.
No reason to lie.
To drop the price of the PS2 down to $149. I also forsee Sony dropping the price of their network-enabled console bundle to $179, or just dropping the non-bundle completely.
Honestly, my PS2 is starting to die. I've been thinking about getting another one when it finally kicks the bucket, or try to repair it atleast. Enough to use it as a Linux box.
That does beg the question, though: what's on the horizon in terms of PS2 games, when we may very well have the PlayStation 3 this christmas?
Informatus Technologicus
that should make it 80 quid, which would compete with the Gamecube here (normally ~75). fat chance though, things never seem to even come close to what the exchange rate says they "should" be. Anyway I'd still take the 'Cube, even if they were the same price.. i thought the x-box might make me a nice media-player but by the time it does reach that price it'll probably be underpowered for mpeg4 :/ oh well.
This is my Sig, this is my Gun. One is for Slashdot and one is for Fun.
I thought this was to compete with Nintendo's Gamecube, which as been at $150 for a while now and sold out not long after the Christmas season ended.
You still can't find 'cubes in many places......
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I hope this makes the ps2 drop to $149. Microsoft will never win me over :p
At $150 this is certainly tempting and I'm pretty torn.
Sony will likely drop to $150 as well, but what about gamecube? How low can that go? Likely not much lower. It is more likely that Nintendo will bundle things with the cube at the $99 price, perhaps games or controllers or even the wavebird.
God Bless America. Why? Did it sneeze?
I'm not too surprised by this news. Given the fact that the PS2 is very old, the Xbox (still) isn't making a dent in the PS2's market share and the Gamecube already near dirt cheap price; lets just say a price drop to $149 was long awaited.
If the XBox gets down to around $100 each, Bill Gates could buy every single man, woman, and child in the US one, and he'd still be worth about $25 billion (assuming he'd pay retail).
XBox would instantly have total market penetration, and then some.
- chrish
I may not be a Xbox fan, but price slashing helps everybody win. Sony would be stupid to maintain the $179 mark.
Now if only game prices drop.
I've already got an Xbox, which actually is a good time: there's actually some games that I enjoy for it now (Ninja Gaiden, finally got my copy of Steel Battalion, and the complete Morrowind).
But I'm still waiting for it to hit $99 until it's cheap enough for me to buy a second one. Why? Modding, folks. I keep eyeing the idea of turning an Xbox into a little media server to store my DVD collection in DivX or Xvid and keep my plastic disks out of the hand of my children's greasy little fingers.
"Daddy - Blue's Clues won't play!"
"Stop touching the DVD after you lick your fingers!"
To be honest, turning it into a little emulator as well doesn't hurt my feelings either to keep my NES/SNES games pretty (especially as I think the Nintendo is about to die).
I've wondered how often people buy the Xbox not for games but for modding the system for these purposes anyway. I have no interesting in pirating, but being able to watch a fansubbed anime on my TV and now through a Mplayer window would be nice.
52 Weeks, 52 Religions with John Hummel
Over at vgtalk.com, the rumour had been circulating around since March 15. There is a scanned Walmart ad showing the price.
I thought, if this price change happens soon enough, I could buy one now at the current price at a place that does 30-day price match guarantees and then get the credit for the difference later.
Then I thought again, and realized that they'll probably change the game bundling for the new price point and so the store won't price-match because it isn't the exact same product.
At least if I wait for the day of the sale, I'll know immediately if I can price-match or not when Wal*mart rapidly runs out of stock.
Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?
"consoles suck" isn't flamebait? Oh I get it it's only flamebait if you disagree.
You're edging pretty close to flamebait there yourself, buddy. :)
If you consider yourself a gamer or an enthusiast and you completely ignore console games, you're missing out on a lot of really, really good shit. If I were to make a list of great console games worth playing that came out in the last three years and then made an equivalent list of PC titles, the console list would be about four times as long. Not to mention the awful stagnation in PC games recently--I can't remember the last original, innovative PC game I played. (I think it was Black and White, which is pushing three years old.) If you don't like twitch shooters or mindless real-time "strategy" games, there's really not much there for you in the PC market. And I can't really think of any other genres (other than MMOG's, perhaps) that are significantly enhanced by the presence of a keyboard and mouse.
Consoles have clear advantages in the number of titles available, the ability to accommodate more than one player on a single piece of hardware, and the price point. I also find console games to be far more interesting and innovative than the typical "let's-be-original-and-make-a-World-War-II-themed- shooter" attitude that so many PC developers seem to have.
And as for user-created content, I only have a limited amount of time to play games. Until I see an abundance of mods and maps that don't completely suck, I'll consider playing more community-generated content. Until then, I'll stick with professional quality.
Uh, I beg to differ. I don't want to start a "this console is better than that console" but we Nintendo fans suffer a much, much worse fate at the hands of the masses than Xbox fans do. We are the ones that have to convince other people that games like Pikmin and Eternal Darkness are truely awesome. We are the ones that had to fight off "Nintendo is going to die" statements. We are the ones that had to listen to the media slander Nintendo in the press, skewing the market reports and make it sound like the Gamecube was never selling very well, when it as ALWAYS been in second place ahead of the Xbox world-wide.
You think you've got it bad, try talking about how much you love your Gamecube in a busy EBGames or Gamestop, and only then you'll truely feel how Mac users do.
Why are we to believe a scanned Wal-Mart ad for the Xbox price drop when the one for Target and the $99 PS2 one never came true?
I just on Yahoo! that one deal may be X-box and Halo for $170. I just bought a X-box and Halo YESTERDAY for $215 after tax. I'm pretty freakin' pissed right now.
The original post was clearly setting the stage for a PC vs Console flame war.
Full disclosure: I didn't write the grandparent post.
The original just seemed like an interesting point. If it was intended to start a flamewar, it was the most innocuous troll I've ever seen.
And regardless, remember that without a willing opponent, a fight is nothing more than a fairly amusing one-man spectacle, not unlike that homeless guy with the tinfoil suit.
The x-box is on sale for 99 bucks for a refurb unit today at fry's in concord for the grand opening
OMG, M$ is now losing even more money per console!!!1!!1!!
There you go. Where are my mod points?
Uh, I love it when you beg, or just get pissy in general.
No, you're right, I spoke too soon. The Gamecube IS a wonderful piece of gaming technology, super cheap, with killer titles. Maybe it doesn't do all the parlor tricks of the Xbox, but for what it's supposed to do, which is play games, it's a killer.
I guess I am lamenting the fact that a woefully inferior console is in the top spot, and we have only ourselves to blame....
In Canada the sales tax varies by province, from ~7% up to ~15%, and it's never hidden. It's also dependant on products: in some provinces there is no sales tax on groceries, but there is sales tax on prepared foods you buy at the same store.
MS should bring it down to $99.
We are the ones that have to convince other people that games like Pikmin and Eternal Darkness are truely awesome.
Gee, you don't sound very convinced yourself, there.
I know what you really mean, however: why is it that we can enjoy these games so much while many people look over and just go "eh?" My theory is that most Gamecube players are either younger (and thus have no preconcieved notions of what a videogame should be) or older (and remember old classic games, and have a more enlightened conception of gaming) than the average gamer, who is teenage male, easy swayed by peer pressure, wants to look cool and pretend to be cool things when playing a game, thinks power is everything, probably watches Dragonball-Z, etc.
That could seriously get rid of the competition...
Yet anti-M$ zealots would continue to denounce it and refuse to get one.
...
At Xmas (and maybe now?) one could buy the Xbox for $179 at it came with 3 games...
You can now buy an Xbox for $150 with 0 games?
Nintendo had the Cube at $150 with a free game and it didn't really sell great. Get rid of the free $50 game, and drop the price $50 and violia, sales out the wazoo...
I just don't get it...
Well, a price drop on the Xbox and PS2 was expected this summer, with the speculated price being $129. Instead, we get one in April, at $149. Don't get me wrong, I like saving $30, but...it's $30! The time for a $149 price has supposedly come and gone, and I'd agree. It's just not that big of a price break - I'd rather they dropped the price in June or so to $129.
Of course, the real question remains is if Sony drops the price around E3 - if the PS2 falls to $129, you can bet that the Xbox would follow.
Of course then they'd need to sell a shitload of games just to recoup that investment.
P.S. If he DOESN'T pay retail, he's spending even more money, since they are LOSING MONEY on each sale at retail.
Ironically, the word ironically is often used incorrectly.
Now all the publishers stock will go up :)
Back to the main topic, in Canada, a Playstation 2 only costs $199 CAD, or about $149 USD already.
An X-Box is $229 CAD, or $172 USD.
Hopefully they'll lower the price of a PS2 in Canada too, so that I can finally justify the expense.
While the price may be the same between $150 for cube and bundled game versus $100 for the cube and $50 for a game off the shelf, the value isn't the same. The bundle is only as good of a value as the seperate pieces if I want the game that *Nintendo* picked. Otherwise it's $150 for the bundle and $50 for the game I really wanted.
Plus, there is the smaller market for people getting a second cube. (Which I'm pondering myself, to avoid the just home from work/just home from school conflict between my son and I....) If you've already have the games you want but need the second console, then the bundle isn't a good value for you.
Analysts also predict sales of Xbox to decline dramatically until the beginning of April.
They're so smart...
This is probably the first almost-reasonable post I've ever seen in favour of console gaming. Let's take a look.
If I were to make a list of great console games worth playing
Completely subjective. If I assume that no console games are worth playing and all PC games are worth playing, I can make a really really long list of games that are "worth playing". Also remember that not all gamers want to play pokemon or platformers or awkwardly controlled third person shooters or oversimplified "RPGs" like FF(x) (did I miss any console game types there?). This makes your list really, really biased and not a good argument.
Not to mention the awful stagnation in PC games recently
Not to mention the awful stagnation in console games recently. A few years ago, the Xbox and PS/2 made 3D games a reality for the console. What have they done with it? A few variations of tomb raider, a few ripoffs from PC games of the time, and they fancied up the Final Fantasy franchise a bit. Nothing innovative there. They still make "shooters" for consoles, too! Just like space invaders but 3D! But seriously, no innovation there.
If you don't like twitch shooters
Isn't this about, oh, 70% of console games on the market? The other 30% being simplistic RPG's, pseudo-RTS games, and other pseudo strategy games like "Wrath"?
mindless real-time "strategy" games
This comment makes no sense. It's either strategy, in which case it needs a little intellectual horsepower, or it's not, and then it doesn't. Why use the "'s? Did the author find a game he wasn't sure about like Giants, which has strategy elements but is a TPS? Oh wait sorry, that would be innovation in a PC game. Can't go there. Maybe Natural Selection... no wait, that's innovative too.
I only have a limited amount of time to play games.
This casts a small amount of doubt on the quality of information we're getting from the parent post. Much like Microsoft telling you the dangers of Linux. Who can you trust?
I am government man, come from the government. The government has sent me. -- G.I.R.
In the Xbox, MS has subsidised a standard architecture which has sold well and has been opened up to run Debian by the Xbox-Linux team. Elsewhere, Sourceforge is hosting the Open XDK Project, which aims to provide an Open Source, Free, Legal Xbox Development Kit to facilitate hobbyist and homebrew coding.
It is now fairly common practice to illegally chip an Xbox to run pirated games. Given the previous experiences with the Sega Dreamcast (the commercial value of game development falling off once the hardware was opened up and piracy protection broken) and Doom (leveraging the long term commercial value of an existing game by laying the source open and relying on the resulting rise of homebrew game coding), it seems that Xbox hardware together with open sourced games and a free development kit could provide Linux with an opportunity to make a more significant impact in the gaming market. As the Xbox moves into the realm of old technology, the price is dropping. In addition, there are rumours of the release of the Xbox 2, which will surely push down the price of second hand hardware. Console manufacturers will move on but the boxes will remain in the wild and all they require is the software to run on them.
The Xbox offers a means to acquire reasonably priced hardware of a standardised type and in an attractive wrapper, which can be relatively easily converted to run as a vanilla Linux box. Whereas the Dreamcast went out of production fairly quickly and has therefore remained more niche, the Xbox has sold well and will remain ubiquitous for some long time. Moreover, in a cooked Xbox you are getting a multi function box that will browse the Internet, handle emails and media applications, perform office functions, allow development and still work as a games machine (which is a significant step up from the Dreamcast).
Games is an area in which Linux has been traditionally weak. Could this now be set to change?
You all must hate to see the facts rubbed into your faces. Everything I said before was a fact, don't get mad at me for killing Xbox, get mad at microsoft for making you spend your money on something else that they wont support in two years.
If carrots got you drunk, rabbits would be fucked up. - Comedian Mitch Hedberg R.I.P. 03/30/68-2/24/05