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Xbox Price Drop Doubles Sales, Sony To Follow?
Thanks to GamesIndustry.biz for its story mentioning Microsoft's indication that dropping Xbox's price to $149 has caused sales to double for the week immediately following the announcement. However, the piece muses: "The question, however, is just how long the sales boost will last - with some analysts suggesting that the 'bounce' isn't sustainable. Certainly, there are many factors which suggest that Microsoft will cut the Xbox price again before Christmas 2004." In addition to this, there's speculation about competition: "All eyes are now on rival Sony, with sources close to the Japanese giant suggesting that it plans to drop the US PS2 price point to $149 later this month - and will add two games (as yet unnamed) to the bundle as well, bringing the effective price of the hardware below the Xbox."
Intresting that they happen not to post any numbers to go with this "news". Does this mean that they have sold 20 last week as opposed to 10 the week before?
"Some things have to be believed to be seen." - Ralph Hodgson
...when are we going to get a European price drop, that's what I want to know. The low value of the Dollar is making US boxes insanely cheap in comparison to our 139 price point.
Not that I don't have all the current consoles already, but a second machine for chipping would be nice.
"I Know You Are But What Am I?"
I find it odd how the first and least powerful next-gen system is now at the highest price point. I guess it just goes to show how big Sony has become in the gaming industry. Even though I still view them as an outsider in an industry where Sega and Nintendo were once kings.
If I could get a PS2, second controller, and 8MB memory card for $149, I'd buy one immediately. As it stands, the combination costs about $249, and you STILL haven't bought a game, which is another $50.
Maybe the rest of you have cash reserves the likes of which I can't imagine, but I don't have $300 to blow on sedentary entertainment. Do you know what I could get for $300 across the river in Windsor?
El riesgo vive siempre!
Please enlighten me.
I'm a European too, and I've no idea what you've just said.
Or, actually I do, but that one thing is out of context...
I knew this was going to start soon. Both Sony and Microsoft own the rights to a good number of games. When they've lowered the price so much that it hurts, they'll just include games...hey, it's no extra cost right? Just the cost of another pressed CD?
It would be interesting to see what the internal financial impact analysis of including games is, compared to public statements of loss due to piracy.
This might be bad news for the Xbox modders out there. If Microsoft takes the cue and no longer lowers the price, but instead includes more games, then they will increase the perceived value of their system while not making it any more attractive to people who want to take advantage of their loss leader.
...
Someone, somewhere, is putting together a Beowulf Cluster.
No sig for you!!
In that interview with the European Sony chief he hinted at a PSone style makeover, which means are we potentially going to be getting a PStwo soon? Maybe Sony didn't immediately follow because the product is in the pipeline for next month's E3?
If they made the PlayStation 2 small, sleek and sexy ala the PSone, you would have to wonder if the hard drive peripheral would fit as easily.....
Anyhow, my PS2 is starting to make real funky noises when I open the slide tray and I've had mine since 2001, so I would definitely buy a replacement if it had something new to offer.
-Joshua
I love Xbox, love it, love it, love it. But even in my fanboy state I still have to question how many of these reduced price Xboxes are being purchased to replace broken First Generation Xboxes that shipped with the faulty Thompson DVD drive?
The new price is nearly half what the consoles originally sold for. Xbox live users could be purchasing a second machine to mod/tinker with.
The PS2 lacks many features that GCN and Xbox have, notably good T&L, hardware bumpmapping, extra levels of texture filtering, and memory speed.
The PS2 and Dreamcast are of the same generation.
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I am definitely not a PS2 fanboy, and I usually diss it quite a bit - but I recently bought Primal and was quite impressed at the texturing, etc - I could have sworn it was almost an Xbox game. But yeah, most of the other games are bland.
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Sell the console cheap. Lose a little money while doing it.
Charge extortionate license fees from the producers for every gamecopy produced or sold.
Why else can you get consoles for the same price as three games?
The point of lowering prices to bleed even more is to get consumers locked onto _their_ machine, so that they will buy _their_ games. It's the games that pay their bills, not the machines. A machine can hold for years (I'm pretty sure my NES still works), but new games keep coming _all the time_.
We are all consumer whores.
If it's any harder than Ninja Gaiden I would rather have a stampeding elephant crush my testicles. I must admit it has a wicked style, very cool indeed. What does he say.. "Henshin Da Go Go Baby?" WTF does that mean?!
I don't intend buying an XBox, but I would buy a reduced-price Playstation 2 due to the awesome RPGs. The XBox doesn't have the games I want, the PS2 does.
... and sell a lot of live subscriptions too.
I'm a light PS2 gamer. I probably have $750 worth of games. Most PS2 owners probably have twice that (just a guess.) Backwards compatibility is about still being able to use the investment I have made in the games - the price of the hardware is small by comparison.
BC
IF you try. Shenmue 2 on the Xbox looks essentially like Shenmue 2 on the DC. The problems the DC version had were mainly load times, and slowdown on the more polygonally intense scenes.
The PS2 just isn't easy to program, while the DC was very easy to program. You could do Primal level graphics on the DC with way less developer experience, which was why a lot of the later DC games still look pretty good when stacked up against the games of the past couple of years.
However, the GCN and Xbox are very easy to program. Development houses that take the extra month or two to really understand the extra features and design them into the games (rather than just taking on reflections everywhere, ala EA's horrible porting efforts), really show through. Like Super Monkey Ball's excellent ground detail everywhere.
A lot of early DC games looked like ass mainly because the developers were writing to the PS1 feature-set. Sega and a couple of other developers really pushed the limit, and did great stuff before the end.
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I was contemplating another Xbox so I can use Live, but I swear to god if someone sees another console in my entertainment unit they will think I have a problem.
Shopping list: 1: Server(X-BOX) $150 Check...
(note to moderators: read the whole thing before moderating "off-topic")
I remember reading (linked from SlashDot) a year or two ago that MS loses $100 on each X-Box sold, this was before the LAST price drop...
This reminds me of the moron my sister works for... he was pricing something they sell below their cost, so they lose money on each sale. When she pointed this out to him, he said "We'll make it up in volume!"... and he was dead serious!
Anyways, back on topic... since Linux runs on X-box, we should probably buy these for steaming media-servers or something, just to help MS lose more money!
- Preferences: Solaris 10 (servers), Ubuntu (desktops), Solaris 11 (personal servers) -
Can't MS release any numbers? I don't think they've released official sales figures since around September. I know they didn't release figures for Christmas, they just said "We outsold Nintendo the last two weeks of the year!" (of course, most Christmas shopping had already been done, and even so, the NPD revealed that MS ousold Nintendo by about two thousand units during that period, compared with the GC outselling the X-box by several hundred thousand units since the $99 price drop.)or something along the lines of that. I think it's pretty pathetic. MS has not been trying to compete with Nintendo, and that's the reason why they're #3 worldwide. They've completely ignored Nintendo, except when they can say they're doing better, like in the Christmas example I showed above. It always seems to be that MS is trying to compete with Sony, yet, if MS simply cut the price when Nintendo went to $99, they might not be in this situation. It's rather arrogant of them, IMO. They ignore Nintendo as if Nintendo poses no threat, but with nintendo having the most experience, the most popular games, and a dedicated fanbase, I think it's rather foolish to ignore them. Also, all of Nintendo's resources, all of their money, is directed towards succeeding in the video game industry. While MS and Sony need to spread their resources out, and make sure that, if one sector of their company is doing badly, their other sectors do well enough to outweigh the loss, Nintendo only has to focus on one market: video games. It's a lot harder to maintain a grip on an industry when you have several others to worry about.
Sure, Sony and MS are much richer than Nintendo. But when you consider the financial instabilities of Sony and MS, lately (Sony is losing tons, and MS, as always, is making money, but not nearly as easily or as much as it has before), the fact that they can only put so much of their money into each individual sector that the company is involved in, as well as Nintendo's practically perfect financial record, Nintendo has a bit of an edge.
With MS seemingly ignoring Nintendo, and Sony in big financial trouble, and taking huge risks with the resources they're pouring into the Cell project, the PsP, the Ps3, and the PsX, I see Nintendo having a very good chance to leapfrog to the top of the industry, once again. In my opinion, it's only a matter of time.
Once the price gets to double digits I will buy one. My main use would be for a divx/mp3/ogg jukebox so I will still have to pay for a modchip and larger hard drive. I have a PS2 and Gamecube for playing games already. I mainly like platformers and racing games on the console and the XBox game selection of the platform genre is lacking compared to Ratchet and Clank, Mario, and Jak and Daxter on the other consoles. I prefer a PC for RPGs and FPSs.
It's a funny thing, I thought the price drop would have a profound effect on sales at my store - for $149.99 you get the system itself, a hard drive, and built in ethernet vs. the $179.99 + $99 + $34.99 package you'd have to pick up in order to get a comparable PS2 deal. But I haven't seen it at my store and I was told candidly by the MS rep in my area that neither has she. Someone from Sony echoed her sentiments, saying the people she has spoken to haven't indicated a large jump in sales, either.
Ask IBM... er ... Stac Electronics ... er .. Lindows ... er Netscape ... er the general comsumer .... er .... computer manufacturers ... er ....
IANAL but write like a drunk one.