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Microsoft Drops Xbox 360 Pricing
Kawahee was one of several readers to tip news of a price cut for the Xbox 360. This comes after Sony dropped PS3 prices and unveiled the Slim model last week. The 360 Elite will now retail for $299, but will no longer ship with HD cables. The 360 Pro has been reduced to $249, but Microsoft is phasing it out. Analysts don't expect this new price point to be a huge boon for sales because the Elite doesn't match the PS3's hardware capabilities and is still more expensive than the Wii. Microsoft has "no plans" for a smaller version of the 360.
The 360 is nearing the end of the typical console lifespan (which has always been about 5 years, give or take) and is getting a bit long in the tooth anyway. A DVD drive and 4-year-old CPU are already starting to hold it back (several new games are coming out for it that will have to span across several DVD's, versus one bluray for the PS3). They really should be looking at a new generation console soon (for 2010 or, at least, 2011). If they wait too long, Sony is going to start trouncing them with the stronger hardware of the PS3.
And this time MS, for the love of God, please put some effort into making a hardware design that doesn't cause another RROD fiasco, or take a step BACKWARDS with no standard hard drive. That was just shameful.
On a personal note, how about making your online architecture a little more friendly to MMO's? The PS3 has several in the pipeline, and you don't have any. There are only so many FPS's and racing games I can put up with before I want some innovation. Backwards compatibility probably wouldn't hurt either. Just my opinion.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Now all that Microsoft has to do is add built in WiFi, somehow earn a reputation for reliability, reduce the amount of sound the Xbox 360 produces, and they might be ready for the big leagues.
What's that? The X-Box 360 has by far the largest market share (other than the wii-toy)?
I guess that means that Sony screwed up their launch pretty freaking badly.
The price drop does make the unit a little more attractive, especially since it now does Netflix streaming as well. I was thinking about getting another Roku box, but this makes the Xbox 360 a more likely purchase. The fact that it can play games is a spiffy feature as well. :)
Although, "Left 4 Dead" might eat up what little free time that I have....
It's been my experience that, when the 'new, smaller, cheaper' version of a console comes out, the next-gen console is probably only a year or two away. I think it's pretty clear they're not coming out with a next gen console this year (too late in the year with no hype; if you plan to release a new console, you target a Sept-Oct release timeframe, so that hopefully people buy them for Christmas, and you begin the hype 6 months or a year beforehand), but they could be planning a 2010 or 2011 release of a new console.
Low-end HDMI Cables are about $3 on MonoPrice.com, etc. Not a big loss, but a bit inconvenient if you don't have a couple lying around. I hope this doesn't boost sales of Monster cables.
MS need to quit making gamers paid for Xbox Live; granted Sony PS3 network has its' issues but it is free to play. I never like the idea of paying full price for the game then have to pay a monthly/yearly fee to be able to play it online.
I predict at this new price point, sales will skyrocket once MS hits the kill switch on all the remaining XBox360s. With a 54% failure rate, people will just figure it's business as usual from owning a 360 and 96% of those people will go out and purchase a new one.
Don't trust a bull's horn, a doberman's tooth, a runaway horse or me.
Microsoft has "no plans" for a smaller version of the 360.
Oh, you mean something that is even more likely to overheat and would probably exceed the current awesome 50-whatever% failure rate?
Yeah, I want that!
.... When they get the reliability improved so that they don't have a 54.2% failure rate, then I might consider buying one.
This is my opinion. To make sure you don't steal it, it's covered by the DMCA.
Thanks for using the UK and the exchange rate to boost your profits, cunts.
http://www.edge-online.com/news/xbox-360-elites-price-cut-arcades-raised
I'm sure the reason they haven't done this all over Europe is because they're only popular in the UK so they feel they can get away with this.
remember the slogan that nearly killed apple? "what you use at work, you'll use at home." ? well, MS knows this. it's tried and true. they are the only system with a flagship online game of magnitude. no ps3 game can touch it as far as participation goes. "what your friends play, you will play." it doesn't matter that the system is worse for more money, people want to play with other people they know. it's not meerly for gameplay. this is why the wii, the most technically inferior of the three is still going for 250$. people want to play with friends while drunk. nothing wrong with that. ps3 can't get the same feeling for $299, and xbox can't for its new price either. each has their perks. this was a good move by microsoft, and they'll milk the 360 until you can run emulators of the games on netbooks for less money.
Ever notice that there are far less free demos and dlc on Sony's network. In the past I wasted several times the cost of live in an average year buying games that I would have skipped had demo been available, in the long run Live has saved me money. Besides that I have averaged enough freebie's each year to make it worth while anyway.
Sony's business model is why its inferior...the developers have to foot the costs of hosting and bandwidth which causes many of them to just not bother. Add in a more refined interface, full chat, netflix, etc and I will gladly pay my paltry $40 a year for Live.
1: media capability's are poor 2: dvd plaback is worse than a PS2 3: game will require 4 disks this year 4: no blu-ray. 5: $50 more and u have a blu-ray 6: $50 and you yourself can upgrade the HDD to a 500GB in the future. 7: $50 more and you have xbox live gold, or a PS3 so all-in all it's a pretty bad deal vs the competition. and unlike others i am not an anonymous coward! so if you feel like i am a troll, just think what of what u are first ;)
I originally held out buying a 360 until the 65nm processor came out (Falcon version). But then due to the RROD problems, I opted to wait for the 65nm GPU as well (Jasper version). Those have been out for a while now, but it's still somewhat hit or miss as to whether the Elite version you get has a Jasper board (65nm CPU + 64nm GPU) or an older version. However, it appears now that most of the new elites and nearly all arcade versions have Jasper. My only reason for holding out longer is that I suspected a significant price drop on the elite was coming.
Now that the price is dropped, I'll finally get one. I'll just make sure to doublecheck that it's rated at 12.1 amps so I know for sure that I'm getting a Jasper.
The most required price cuts are for the outrageously expensive wifi adapter and the absurdly overpriced 120 gb hard drive. I have an original xbox 360 with 20gb hard drive (only had 1 RROD, hoorray) and I can barely install 1 game, and forget about movie downloads or a couple of demos unless you uninstall that game. Right now in spain a 120gb harddrive + wifi adapter will actually cost you more than the full xbox 360 arcade pack. To all you PS3 fanbois, bless Sony for letting you put any hard drive you wish. Believe me, after years fighting with a ridiculous 20gb drive thats one hell of a feature (...insert envy emoticon here...) WTF Microsoft??!!!!
How lame! I opened up my new PS3 Slim, and found no cables. How the HELL can you play games designed to be played in HD, on an HD TV, if you don't have HD, or HDMI Cables?!?! How Lame! And now Microsoft is following suit?
Who are the "Most People" that Microsoft is talking about? Every single person I know who owns a 360, both in real life and online, is using an HDTV. Lucky for me I just bought an elite with the HDMI cables, and am swapping the cable between the two. Its so ridiculous...
Why does every console seem to be a complete , from scratch, design. Why couldn't the next Xbox 360 be evolutionary. Upgrade the 3 core PowerPC chip to a 4-6 core at higher clock rate. Upgrade the ATI GPU to the correpsoding latest tech.
That way the developers could hit the ground running with slightly modified dev tools and "A" rated titles could be available very early on in the consoles life which helps decide a "victor".
Like wise sony could do the same, I am under the impression that cell was designed to be modular, so how about 2-4 of the latest die shrunk cells int eh next console with latest nvidia GPU tech.
They are phasing out the Pro model at $250 and dropping the Elite model to $300. However, once the Pro models are gone it's still going to cost you $300 to get a Xbox 360 (the Arcade model doesn't count). So, how exactly is this a price drop? I suppose you could argue that it is a value increase (as you are getting 120 GB instead of 60 GB), but I certainly wouldn't call it a price drop.
I bought a Xbox 360 Pro a year ago for $300. I've had no problems with it and enjoyed it a lot. However, if I were to do it all over again today I would go with a PS3. Back then a PS3 was $500. Today, however, for the same price as a Xbox 360 you get built-in Blu-ray, WiFi, and a standard hard drive interface. On the hardware front it's not even a contest. Xbox 360 has some great exclusive games, but so does PS3 (I hate exclusive games, but that's the world we live in). On top of that, Xbox Live is $50 a year. Xbox 360 was killing PS3 from the start (and rightly so; who pays $600 for a console?), but now the PS3 is in position to reverse that trend. Meanwhile, half of all Xbox 360s are failing. The future doesn't look so bright for the Xbox 360...
Yeah, I guess 20GB would suck... I've got one of those 60GB ones, that's plenty but I think I have less than 40GB free. The pricedrop means that now all 360s with HDDs come with the 120 GB one so a pricedrop on that part probably won't do that much.
Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
If you have an older television that needs component cables though, you'll have to shell out $35-40 for the XBox specific ones.
But -$100 +$40 +40GB = still a better deal than before the price drop.
...won't even compensate for the DVDs that it will destroy during the Xbox 360's lifetime.
"The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.
This has been something that has perpetually annoyed me. For instance, subscribers are sending $50 a year to Microsoft to play Infinity Ward's online content. It would be one thing if people were sending that $50 to Infinity Ward but this is going to Microsoft. It always seemed weird gamers where eager to pay Microsoft when they aren't responsible for content or fixing games like Modern Warfare 2 and yet are getting payment for it.
This is compounded by the PC vs console experience where a lot of the features XBox 360 fans fawn over are provided cheaper and easier than $50 a year. Console gamers wonder how dense PC gamers without XBox Live while PC gamers wonder how dense console gamers are when the same technology is all around them for free to use.
Illustration: The new accurate Xbox 360 logo
Microsoft has discounted the entry-level Doesn't-Do-Much Xbox 360 to $200 from Friday, $50 cheaper than the Nintendo Wii. (This will translate to a GBP250 price point in the UK.)
"We are thrilled to be the first next-generation console on the market with a big 'Microsoft' logo on it to reach $199, a price that invites everyone to enjoy Xbox 360," said Aaron Greenberg, marketing marketer for Xbox. He says this will cause a "smash and grab" mentality amongst consumers. "And not 'grab and smash' as they throw it out the window when it gets a red ring of death again."
The models that actually play anything worth playing will, of course, stay at $300 and $400. "But history shows that more than 75 percent of all console sales happen after the price falls below the $200 mark. Which would be the PS2, PSP and DS ... uh, forget I said that."
Greenberg assures consumers that the new cheap Xbox 360s will not be refurbished red ring of death casualties. "Not all of them. Honest. However, twenty Xbox lifts every morning will be much better exercise than Wii Fit."
Microsoft Japan is already actually paying people to take the machines, with little success. "We hope more people will be able to enjoy Xbox 360," said marketing marketer Takashi Sensui, "and we can stop enjoying quite so many of them. We also have this fine pile of HD-DVD drives ... Wait! Come back!"
Greenberg further assured consumers that "the Xbox 360 will kick the PS3's ass every way from Friday, you wait and see." Nintendo were unable to comment in time for this story as they were still too busy trying to make Wiis fast enough to keep them in the shops.
http://rocknerd.co.uk
Get yourself an inexpensive ASUS WL520gu router and install the latest tomato firmware. Blammo! Instant wireless bridge for 4 ethernet devices, no client drivers required. You're welcome.
I am literally 3000 tokens away from the chaotic crossbow --Stephen
I bought a xbox360 the 1st go around mainly due to the $600 price tag of the PS3. I already knew about the RROD issue so I bought the extended warranty from GameStop. Had the thing 5 months in a well ventilated area and I played it around 10-15 hours a week on average. RROD. So I brought it back, traded it in with the warranty, got a new one, and sold it to a guy at work along with the 6 games I played through in those 5 months.
A few months later I bough a 40GB PS3. The only regret I have is that I didn't hunt down a release 60GB with backwards compatibility. But to be honest it doesn't really matter. I stream everything from my Mac using PS3 Media Server which is free. And, I've played some pretty cool games in the process on both systems which was awesome.
It takes a big man to cry. It takes a bigger man to laugh at that man. ~ Jack Handy
I like how the article (and its link to the article pushing the PS3) both ignore the continued existence of the $200 "Arcade" unit. Tell you what. I'll use the same approach:
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Attention! Microsoft introduces bare-bones Xbox 360 with smaller internal storage and a pricetag $100 lower than the recently announced PS3 Slim! With this entry, Microsoft seeks to one-up the competition - both from Sony and their mutual rival, Nintendo - by offering the most affordable current-generation gaming console in the market. Combined with what is widely regarded as the most robust library of AAA titles, this new Xbox 360 package may prove irresistible to financially weary consumers this holiday season.
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I also stifle a chuckle at the various folks who have implied that the PS3's price has been the only thing keeping it from being a success. Developers would beg to differ, since it takes a great deal more time and money to eke a 360-like performance out of the PS3, and generally involves sacrifices, such as anti-aliasing or reduced texture detail. Someone already said it earlier: The PS3 had three years to prove its hardware superiority. The only argument a person can still make is a deliberately vague one: To say that the PS3 has a "hardware advantage" (Blu-ray, Wifi) without specifically admitting that its visual capabilities are in fact inferior, as Konami themselves demonstrated with their three-year, 720p, 24fps masterpiece.
Until the Valhalla edition of the 360 comes out? (Supposedly comes out next year)
Did you know 80 to 90% of the moderators on slashdot wouldn't recognize a troll even if one dragged them under a bridge.
In the UK, at least, Microsoft's dropping the 360 Elite price but it's discontinuing the Pro. Combined with the changes to the Elite box contents post-price-drop it means we're basically paying £30 more if we want the system with a hard drive, and in exchange we only get a measly 60GB extra HDD space. It's not like HDDs are expensive on their end.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
You mean kinda like the same way I can load GCC onto my PS3?
You have a fat PS3, which is switchable between a game console and a desktop computer at boot time. But I have a feeling Sony will discontinue it in the fourth quarter of this year, just as it discontinued the fat PS2 in favor of the slim PS2. And like the slim PS2, Xbox 360, and Wii, the slim PS3 is exclusively a game console.
Alright, let's get down to the nitty gritty. for 300 dollars you get a console that is a bluray player. Wow, blueray players are 100 at walmart. You get a slim console that has neither backwords compatibility for ps2 games and it doesn't allow 3rd party operating systems installed. It has a small handfull of good games. And it get's hotter than a SLI laptop (do expect hardware malfunctions on this batch). And for 200, I can get a system with streaming unlimited netflix movies for 9 dollars a month, upgradability without the need to use a screwdriver, and it comes with a cable to transfer all the files off my old hard drive to my new larger one. Has a huge collection of xbox1 and 360 titles it plays. Here's what I know from real gamers, ps3 has hurt themselves by: Not caring about people who want to play their older ps2 games, not caring about the people that just bought them for cheap linux servers, not caring about keeping their exclusive titles, not caring that gamers don't care about movies, we buy game systems for games, not caring that the world economy was in a recession but keep your prices sky high until it's too late that no one cares anymore. And if you want the clinger, many people who owned the PSP's know just what gamers think are good games. Good games to sony are stuff that when you pull out the UMD disc, you want to put it through a paper shredder to cleanse yourself from ever playing it, and wasting your hard earned money. All I have to say is, sorry sony. Too little. Too late.