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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 $179."
I may have to finally get one at that price. Not to play games of course.. I'd use it as a MythTV frontend.
Anyone care to take a guess as to when the first "OMG, M$ is now losing even more money per console!!!1!!1!!" post get modded +5 informative??
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.
Q: What's the difference between open source zealots and labor unions?
A: Open source doesn't hold loud protest picket lines outside the offices of those who choose proprietary.
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 just bought an XBox!!! WHy me? Why does this always happen to me??!? Well, at least the "Greatest Hits" line is pretty good at $20. And I got Halo at $25, which is cool.
As far as the neXtBox or whatever, I'll get it when it gets to the $179 price point.
What, me Tweet?
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?
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).
And they would STILL be getting more value from the video card purchase. (Though I'd probably recommend the 9800 Pro for about half the cost.)
No console game I've seen supports substantive user-created content (eg mods) and there are just some things that a mouse and keyboard will ALWAYS be better at. Plus you aren't stuck with low-res interlaced video. Yadda, yadda, "consoles suck", etc. (Yes, this is off-topic, but frankly parent post is flamebait.)
It's the best console platform ever (Halo, the high-speed-only Xbox live, MP3 Library, HDTV, DVD, wonderfully hackable). My PS2 lies dormant in the closet, repugnant in its inferiority (well, maybe not the controller).
I love the Xbox so- I love it as much as I loved my Dreamcast, which still gets played more than my PS2. All the consoles I love go away in the end....the Xbox is too good, it can't win.
We Xboxers are doomed to be the Mac users of the game console world, constantly touting our obvious platform superiority to deaf ears.
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 x-box is on sale for 99 bucks for a refurb unit today at fry's in concord for the grand opening
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.
Doesn't matter when xbox isn't going to be backwards compatible with xbox 2 like PS3 will be with ps2. If you buy an xbox to download mp3s...err sorry I mean wma's to your xbox hard drive then you need to get a damn computer...plus it must be dark and stinky where you're at. If you buy xbox for the games...then you really need to get a computer that can play games. Xbox will be done for if they don't make it backwards compatible...not that I care at all. Go ahead and waste all your money on something that will fail worse than the Nintendo Virtual Boy!
If carrots got you drunk, rabbits would be fucked up. - Comedian Mitch Hedberg R.I.P. 03/30/68-2/24/05
MS should bring it down to $99.
That could seriously get rid of the competition...
Yet anti-M$ 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...
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?