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Xbox Price Drop To $149 Now Official
bpitzer writes "It's official - Microsoft is cutting the price on the Xbox to $149, effective tomorrow, according to CNET News. Now, will Sony follow suit on the PS2? And how long until the next price drop? Maybe at this year's E3, making three in a row?" We previously reported on rumors to this effect, and other readers point to the official Microsoft press release, sporting a quote from noted tech analyst P.Diddy: "[I] believe that the system's cultural
influence as a social entertainment brand has only just begun."
...it starts trumpeting quotes from rappers as news.
When exactly does Xbox2 come out?
they also dropped the price in canada to $199 CDN
Marge, get me your address book, 4 beers, and my conversation hat.
"[I] believe that the system's cultural influence as a social entertainment brand has only just begun."
This just in: rampant usage of the xbox has increased usage of the word owned!
...thanks guys.
Thank goodness my old Amiga 2000 still works :-)
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
So what kind of loss is Microsoft taking now to ship these things?
If they already sold the X-Box for below cost, wouldn't this just hurt them further?
They were already selling them at a loss! Let's all go out and buy one of these, that will be striking a great blow for open source!!
Silly M$, this is an exploit for their business, not just Windoze.
I wonder if Nintendo will/can drop their price below $99. Personally... I'm a big Nintendo fan. I can't believe, in the 2+ years I've owned the console, that it took me so long to try Metroid Prime.... what a delight!
Here's some links from an almost-submitted post.
Microsoft Cuts Xbox Price to $150
Microsoft has cut the price of its Xbox game console to about $150 ($149.99), a $30 drop. The price cut was widely expected by analysts in a move to spur slowing console sales for the Xbox as the current generation approaches the end of its cycle, and gamers anticipate the next-generation of consoles in 2005. Microsoft also announced several price cuts on Xbox games and titles including 'Xbox Music Mixer, Project Gotham Racing 2 and Crimson Skies: High Road to Revenge.' More coverage at CNet, CNN Money, ZDNet UK, AP via Seattle PI and Bloomberg via Seattle Times. (Microsoft press release)
Is it a significant milestone when a console becomes cheaper than the modchip for that console?
Saying "jumped the shark" has sooo jumped the shark.
-- Fighting mediocrity one bad post at a time.
as previously reported on Slashdot. No specific details, though.
So we have an established monopoly with $50b in cash in the bank now selling their product way below cost to steal market share.
how is this NOT dumping? if Sony or Hitachi did this with TV's they would be prosecuted.
I wonder if they are gonna drop the price once again when halo 2 comes out. That would seem like a pretty reasonable way to move a whole lot of Xboxes, but that's just me. I like halo.
I must say I don't mind a price drop of this nature. As a consumer it's a good thing, at least short term where I lay out few clams and come up with a good product for the lower price.
However I'm sure nobody believes MS is anywhere near making a profit, indeed they're taking gigantic losses (not relative to their income of course, but in real numbers) to do so. Obviously Sony will be doing the same with the PS2 and whatever it's next box is, and Nintendo too if they release another.
Doesn't this just end up as a war of attrition, where the company who is most able to sustain gigantic losses comes out on top? Not only coming out on top but coming out as the ONLY contender. While it's not a monopoly situation now it seems clear to me it's heading that way.
I know nobody can prosecute a company on something they have not yet done, and there's perhaps no indication of who will win in the end out of the gigantic gaming manufacturers. Indeed, far be it for me to tell someone they CAN'T throw away their profits, but looking ahead it seems impossible to end up in any other way than someone with a massive monopoly. No new players, no competition between existing ones, and it won't end cleanly... because (forgive the cliche) in the end "there can be only one"
Adult mac desktops & wallpapers
I think you missed the sarcasm in the article.
Noted tech analyst?
Your bus is leaving.
Let's restrict the "We'll bankrupt Microsoft by buying the $150 XBox and coverting it to Linux" topics to replies to this post. This includes all cheap PC quotes from pricewatch, as well as arguments to the real cost of the XBox (better graphics, small HD, working from TV instead of monitor, monitor cost, yadda-yadda-yadda.) Not meaning to be a troll, but it seems 3/4 of the conversation revolves around these topics. [Well, there goes the Karma].
If a man's character is to be abused there's nobody like a relative to do the business. -Thackeray, William
yes
What other company would sell a device for $149 when it costs $400 to manufacture? Only Microsoft would. Linus sure as hell wouldn't.
Zealots are sure in a quandry here. If Microsoft raises the price to above it's manufacturing cost, they scream that Bill is being a robber baron. But yet if they make the price more palatable as the Zealots want, it's labeled as dumping. The Zealots can't pick one stance.
But Microsoft does. It's stance is 'quality products, at a fair price'.
..when they're giving the Xbox away in a box of Lucky Charms.
Cruising the internet on my TI-99/4A @ a whopping 300 baud!
Absolutely!. Mmm: cheap webservers....
The article also mentions a PlayStation 2 price drop in mid-April, so don't buy an X-Box based on price just yet.
The Xbox controller will never fit!
Got news for you...all console makers sell their product below cost, and have for many years. They make it up on the games, though, which actually winds up making them more money than in the days of $300 consoles and $30 games. (Keep in mind that the console makers collect license fees even on third-party game titles, because the titles have to be officially licensed to run on the consoles. This not only ensures a revenue stream, but keeps third-party publishers from flooding the market with cheap, crappy games, which is part of what caused the video game crash of 1983.)
Be who you are...and be it in style!
It's called a sugar mama... all you need to do is get one. I did and it changed my world. She busys me toys to keep me entertained. Sometimes I feel like a dog just playing with the toys my owner bought. But then I play with my cool toys and don't care.
Evolution or ID?
I thought that Sony dropped the price about 6 months ago, but then added in a subsidized modem and slightly increased the price to 170, so that the price effectively stayed the same, but the value of your purchase increased.
Bunch of marketing crap really.
When you have no design skills yourself, you simply sample from someone who does.
With this new price point and the hacks for the XBox out there, is this worth purchasing as a MPEG, MP3 and PVR entertainment PC? I'm not really interested in the games for the thing, but if I can get a decent computer out of the thing for $150, I'd be game.
Thoughts?
50 x $150 = $7500
This gives me 35000MHz of processor power and 3200MB of RAM. That'd be a pretty nice setup.
Got news for you...all console makers sell their product below cost, and have for many years
Congratulations, you've fallen for a myth. The only consoles before the Xbox to have been sold at a loss are the Sega Saturn and the Sega Dreamcast.
Please don't post myths - learn how to use Google.
it's in my head
"There's only one game I'd like to play on the Xbox"
You are missing out on the games then. I have 2 for you to try. Ninja Gaiden and Ghost Recon. Oh, and get xbox live too. You will never go do anything else again.
Evolution or ID?
other readers point to the official Microsoft press release, sporting a quote from noted tech analyst P.Diddy: "[I] believe that the system's cultural influence as a social entertainment brand has only just begun."
Or for those of you who know Diddy-speak:
"yeah, uh huh, uh, thats right, c'mon now"
Where does the school board find them and why do they keep sending them to ME?
Check your facts before posting. No xbox mod-chip costs more than $100.
Go here for teh [sic] funny.
Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong.
Nintendo and Sony at worst always broke even, up until very recently, neither had EVER sold a console at a loss. Nintendo is(or was before resuming manufacturing) now selling at a very minimal loss at their $99 price point.
The key to the enjoyment of pop music is to replace any instance of "love" with "C.H.U.D."
Ah, but see, mine is from when you had a firebutton on the joystick base which you hit, not directly on, but with the side of the thumb. I remember times when it felt like the end of my thumb was going to fall off, the joint hurt so bad.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Nice troll. The "selling the console at a loss" state is not unique to Microsoft. Most (or possibly all) of the consoles are like that. It's like cell phones -- sell the hardware at a loss, make it up on the accessories, services, etc.
I also recall hearing somewhere that they get the manufacturing costs ways down as the product matures, so later revs are as much of a loss, or possibly not a loss at all.
Complexity is Easy. Simplicity is Hard.
Yeah, I usually don't start with an insult, but you're an idiot.
Microsoft isn't lowering the price of their system because they "care" about consumers and want everyone to drink from their goblet... they just want everyone to drink from their goblet whether they like them or not.
Every major video game console on the market right now is sold at a loss (analysis of hardware for the systems show that Nintendo has the lowest loss margin even at their $100 price tag as a side note. Then PS2, then X-Box.) Nintendo, Sony and Microsoft all sell these systems at a loss in order to get licensing fees out of game producing companies. They essentially do nothing, and get paid for it.
Microsoft lowering the price is pure economics. The cost of $200 is too much for some people. They realize if they drop it $50, they can sell more consoles. By selling more consoles, more games (theoretically) will get moved off the shelf and more licensing fees are paid to Microsoft.
Microsoft lowering the price has nothing to do with caring about people. Its about caring about profit. (How any good business is run.)
i've been waiting for this price drop! i'm going to go out tomorrow and pick one up! it'll sit right next to my PS2 which has been idle for the last 8 months due to Lack of Playing Time(tm). But at least i can say i have one!
The major contribution of the Xbox to our culture so far has been corpse humping in first person shooters. Not really something to be proud of...
Haven't people installed linux onto the Xbox? Does it actually work well or is it more of a novelty sort of thing? $150 is pretty good for a linux box. The Xbox has like a 733mhz processor, right? So it shouldn't be too slow...and if it really does use pretty standard PC hardware, then it might work out all right. As opposed to the PS2, I mean, which has weird hardware specifically designed for running games.
Didn't I read somewhere that it was going to $99 by Labor Day? Or was that just an ugly rumor, and this is the only price drop I can really expect?
Nope, I'm not nuts - this was the rumor.
Education is the silver bullet.
I hate to be a spelling nazi, but you misspelled pwned.
Vote for global prefs bug
And the Sega 32X.. Lesson learned: Do not invest in Sega, but you can certainly buy their gear!!
Mod +5 Drunk
Funny how immediately after blaming someone for falling for a myth, his sig proclaims that Bush already has Osama...
For a long time I wanted to play GTA3. I pondered buying a $199 PS2 and then said "Naah, I'll wait for the price to go down". That was a year and a half ago, and they are still $179. Last year I bought GTA3 for my PC and a game controller very similar to the PS2 controller. Together the pair cost me maybe $65 and the graphics blow away the PS2.
Well, if you listened to the original single version, you'd note that all that P. Diddy did was take a tape recording of "I, Cringely" complaining about MS and say, "uh huh, unh HUNNNHH" over the top of it.
+5:offtopic,but anti-American
Since the Xbox is essentially a PC with a lot of anti-hack DRM crap built in, I wonder when it becomes practical simply to canibalize it for parts, stick on an "open" BIOS and turn it into a real low end PC?
Not as a basement hacker project, but as a commercial scale re-engineering effort. If you are replacing the BIOS with a one that will turn it into a regular PC and not play any PS/2 games, they could hardly be raided for piracy.
My rights don't need management.
While the parent of your comment is pretty much a troll, most consoles are not like that. How often must this be posted before this myth is finally laid to rest?
Don't think of it as a flame---it's more like an argument that does 3d6 fire damage
It's a PC. We all know it. How much would a PC with hardware of "the same class" cost now? I don't think it would be more. It's far from "state of the art" technology by now and PCs that are 2-3 years old, easily fall in the "economy class". Think something similar to HDD40GB, GForce2, P3 1GHZ, 256M RAM - where would such thing land on a shelf in a computer shop?
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The price tag of ~ $150 is still not low enough for me to buy a second console. In fact, for someone like me who has already invested in "This generation" of consoles, anything over a hundred is too much. Its not a casual buy whenever you see three digits in front of the price tag's decimal point. I don't see what they intend to gain from this manuever.
Go Gusties
Name the company that sells an OS and an office suite at 80% profit margin? Name the company that could significantly cut prices across the board because it has 40+ BILLION in CASH in reserve, but doesn't? Name the company that is inducing a loss-leadership so that eventually it can make large profit margins. Capitalism is the best system in the world, but it is hardly perfect nor always thinks of the consumer. Make no mistake, Microsoft has demostrated a willingness to own markets at any cost, especially as the cost of consumers. After all, how many companies with superior products have been decimated so that we have been left with a lack of innovation for a decade? The definition of a viable system is that it must work in the long term. The short term consumer gain will come at a huge long term cost. It took over five years before browser innovation started again, for instance.
I, for one, do not welcome our attempted overlords.
Bel, the mostly sane.. "Of course I can't see anything! I'm standing on the shoulders of idiots." -- Me
...you can bet they won't drop it to 80!
Am I right in thinking that you can't export the X-Box from the US because of the encryption issue? That is the offical reason given when you try to export an iPod.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Yes, it's a PC. But by nowadays standards, it's a crappy PC. The stuff is rather old. A P3 CPU, a 20-60G harddrive, some three years old gfx card, no monitor included, moderate amounts of DIMM RAM. Might be good for embedded projects like laser displays for a DJ, info booth boxes and such, but there are better and cheaper home PCs available.
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1) Deal a financial blow to Microsoft that will make the EU fines pale in comparason and
2) Raise up our army of giant tux-the-penguins for the last battle against the Evil Empire (Microsoft.)
Hmm maybe I should lay off the cough syrup...
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Microsoft just sampled the press relesase of a more talented game console company.
I didn't even know P.Diddy knew such a large word as "entertainment", let alone it's meaning.
Putting the romance back into necromancer.
I reckon a MAME emulator like this would could cost something like $25 at the factory door.
And if you thought that was boring you obviously havn't read my Journal ;-)
Heck, new hardware at $150 means skipping 5 new releases at $50 each and waiting until they're $20 each. I don't have to skip the games, just wait a little bit.
Some games don't ever get re-released, and by the time you get to them, they cost upwards of $70 for one copy on eBay. Look at Chrono Trigger for Super NES, Super Puzzle Fighter II Turbo for PlayStation, or Rez for PlayStation 2.
Over here it's 129.00, which at today's rates is 234.58 United States Dollars.
A pizza of radius z and thickness a has a volume of pi z z a
Meanwhile at Sony headquarters, execs are releasing PS2 with a new slogan
"Live in Microsoft world, but play in ours".
I have a PC that I've been slowly upgrading over the years (motherboard is 5 year old dual proc BX with 2xP3-850). It suits my needs just fine as a software engineer. The biggest cost this year was adding an 80GB hard drive - not much really. Why would I spend a couple of grand to get a machine capable of playing games? Why would even set myself up to that I would need to keep spending top dollar to keep it playing games? That's a waste of money. Not to mention that it's in my office and nowhere near my stereo nor TV nor in a position several people can sit around it. Also, who would want a large noisy PC in their living room? Nah, I bought an XBox and *no* new game will have performance problems and force me to upgrade.
Buying a gaming PC is a constant battle against one's bank account and a foolish mistake that I've only made once. If you've got money to squander so frivolously then go ahead as there are plenty of people who you keep employed. I would rather save the money and spend it boozin' or taking my wife out to dinner or travelling to other countries, or any other number of things. Trust me, you can do a lot with the money you save.
Ah no, they don't. That's why they rap, to tell the whole world how great they are, when in their deluded little ghetto thug minds they are forced to attempt reconciliation of the paradox of believing they are great while being treated like yesterday's turd by all around them.
/. also!
The real tragedy is, lots of people are stupid enough to believe them... i.e. Sony Music.
Don't believe me? Name one rapper who doesn't do a piece about how fucking awesome they are, and everyone better watch out. It's like pre-pubescent pencilnecks playing Unreal Tournament. You can say what you like when those you are saying it to are on the end of a CD player, or a DSL line. A phenomenon you'll see here on
I picked up an XBox around Christmas, ordered my mod chip (Xecuter 2.3b), bought a 120 GB WD HD and proceeded to get busy. A couple of hours later, the Xbox was ready and I began to copy over my media. By the end of the night, I had everything stored safely on the box with a simplistic enough setup (EvoX & XBMC) so that my wife (a bright technophobe) was, suprisingly, very comfortable with. Add another $30 for a remote and it's a kick ass media system, that also houses my NES, SNES, Genesis, Mame and Apple ][ library (I am so lame). Oh yeah, it also pulls my favorite shoutcast streams so that I can listen to GrooveSalad or SecretAgent while getting pleasantly trampled in the backyard on those perfect spring saturday evenings.
You can also get yer Xbox working happily with a samba share. I was personally thrilled just get all of that shit off of my studio box so that I can get back to recording music... not cluttering it up with 40 GB of music and DIVX movies.
Yes, you could also do all of this with a custom built PC, but then again... a custom built PC isn't going to play the odd Xbox game that catches yer fancy.
So, if a total of around $300 and a small amount of dirty work is worth it to you to put together a very competent Media (Mp3/Ogg/AAC,etc... DIVX, SVCD, DVD, shoutcast stream), emulation machine that also plays xbox games... yes, it's worth it.
A couple of years back, I spent $250 on a DVD player that was fitted with NUON crap, what an effin mistake that was. Now that DVD player is a spare MP3 player for the bedroom.
____
#SickNotWeak
Don't forget "man humping". I know it's not an offering of the games themselves, but the console does tend to attract a "certain type" of male.
Think about it - when you see people looking through XBox titles, do you more often see a single guy on his own, or TWO guys, smiling at each other and looking like they want to hold hands? "It's good to play together" indeed.
A kid asked me if I knew which games were best for the XBox. I said "Sorry, I'm into chicks".