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Xbox360 Pricing, 2 Models at Launch
Tom writes "According to news in the LA Times, Microsoft will release two Xbox 360 packages when the console is launched later this year. The basic package will retail for $299 and will not include a hard disk, nor will it include a wireless controller, instead shipping with a wired pad.
The second package will retail for $399 and will include a 20 Gb hard disk, wireless controller, wireless headset, Ethernet cable and remote control. No release date has been revealed, but a mid to late November date is expected."
That's a lot of money to play Halo. My resident expert on consoles (my daughter) tells me that people buy the Xbox primarily for the Halo series of games. Also, that the current incarnation of the machine has serious stability / quality problems.
[Insert pithy quote here]
I thought I was hearing good things about the 360. I though Microsoft was actually going to have a huge advantage via using Xbox live to download new content, levels, games, etc, but now that's gone. I was hearing all sorts of cool things about being able to design your own games/levels and being able to share via Xbox live. That's gone too...
I don't see how saving essentially $10, or less, now by omitting the harddrive and then charging a $100 more to get it, will drive sales. Has Microsoft forgotten that a $399.99 system will not sell, even in 2005. Also M$ has forgotten that the a-holes at the game stores will jack up the price of the system by putting everything into "packs" so that $399 system will end up costing $599 if you want one anytime soon.
I keep on hearing that M$ is going to use solid state memory. If so, I don't see how it could be any cheaper than a hard drive.
I don't understand why M$ seems to be pulling their punches, they only have $40 BILLION dollars in the bank.
"Jeremy, you need to get to an internet cafe and cut and paste some appropriate sentiments about me from the world wide
At this rate you'll have to by 3 versions of each of the 3 consoles before you retire...and possibly more!
and get yourself PSP or the Playstation 3 http://www.ps3land.com/.
Java Oracle Linux Enthusiast
Awesome, now I know two things. How much money I'll be saving with my Revolution, and that I won't be missing a damn thing.
:)
I mean at first I was buying a Revolution on principle... because I strongly dislike M$ and I loathe Sony. (not to mention Nintendo makes kick-ass games, and their entire back catalog downloadable) Now, it turns out they're fucking up their consoles anyway. The main advantage of consoles has always been hardware continuity... and $400? Rediculous.
The Revolution might have a little less power, but at least they don't always overpromise and underdeliver.
You say games won't use it, but the fact is that the XBox could make them use it whether they're aware of it or not. The simplest example would be if it cached content as it was read from the disc so it didn't have to be reloaded each time. A second example would be if it acted like an ultra large memory card for saving games. Another example were if it were used to "hibernate" a game so someone could walk away and pick up where they left off the day before.
All of this is nice, but not required (or even all that important) to make a good game. If you don't believe me, then why didn't the Xbox outsell the PS2?
Then there are games which could use it. For example, to download patches, extra levels and so forth.
Also, nice, but not required.
A HD could mean that it could rip songs, movies etc. to disk and play them on demand. And MS could sell video on demand - films, shows, trailers and so on, as well as distributing firmware updates, patches and more on it.
Yes, and if you want these features you're going to have to shell out for a hard drive. (In fact, you might eventually be able to choose the size based on your needs).
Nothing you list is required for a good gaming experience; they are all nice extras. Many people would rather save $100 than have these extras, so why make them spend it. Now, you could say that Microsoft should include it all (or at least the hard drive) at the lower price point. Nice idea, but Microsoft has made the (probably wise) decision that there is only so much money they are willing to loose on each console sale.
WTF crack are you smoking? how is MS's backwards compatibilities issues under-delivering? no one even really believed they could do it at all, and when the announced it, they said they could only guarantee the top games to work at launch and others to be added later. they never ruled out the possibility of say 40% working at launch.
seems you like to jump on the overreaction bandwagon too much. life must be really depressing for you.