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Xbox 2 for $400?
An anonymous reader writes "CNN/Money has posted a new Game Over column quoting an industry analyst who suggests the next generation Xbox could cost as much as $400. This is on top of software price increases of as much as $10 per game, which (according to the article) have already been confirmed. Also discussed are backwards compatibility and the lingering question of whether the Next Xbox will have a hard drive."
It's $100 more than the original Xbox was at introduction.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xbox
It was $299 on November 15, 2001.
In 2002, it was $199.
In 2003, it was $179.
In 2004, it was $149.
So a price of $399 isn't that unreasonable, and we can expect similar price cuts over a three-year product lifespan.
Also, the prices being mentioned now may reflect what Microsoft would have to charge to sell the consoles without losing money on each sale. Depending on what the other console makers do, they may be forced into a lower price.
Actually. The Saturn launched at $400. Plus the Dreamcast launched for $200, and the Gamecube launched for $250 if I remember correctly. Been a few years...heh.
"A truly wise man realizes he knows nothing."
Every next gen system for the last 2 generations? No.
Saturn: $400
N64: $200
Dreamcast: $200
GameCube: $200
MS purchased a firm that specializes in emulating the x86 architecture on a powerPC platform
Specifically, MS purchased a firm that had lots of experience getting Virtual PC on a G4 CPU to work. Interestingly, Connectix sold itself just before it was revealed that getting VPC to work on a G5 CPU was going to be a lot more work and probably run slower when completed--you see, the G4 has a built-in endian code swticher, but the G5 does not. Now, VPC has been released for the G5--but it's not great. And although it was announced as a feature, it still doesn't use the native graphics CPU, but instead still emulates--which means it blows for games.
Honestly, I think MS was taken by Connectix. Could happen, if MS didn't do their due diliegence and were in a hurry to fill a need. Anyway, I wouldn't count on VPC being the tool that allows the Xbox2 to run Xbox1 games--might happen, but there's a lot of technical ifs. I think that's about as likely as Apple releasing a built-in Xbox environment on their G5 CPUs, actually.
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$tar -xvf
The Gamecube didn't really do "badly" anywhere, although I believe it is a bit weak in Europe. In the US it's clearly in third, but I've never seen any figures suggesting the gap between it and the Xbox is very large.