Slashdot Mirror
Why You Don't Want a $99 Xbox 360
itwbennett writes "Peter Smith has done the math on Microsoft's $99 Xbox 360 — 4GB model (no hard drive) and a Kinect sensor. Here's why it's a bad deal: 'You'll be paying $99 + $359.76 in monthly fees, or $458.76 over the course of two years. Compare that with (I'm using prices from Amazon that were accurate as of May 7th, 2012) $287.70 for an Xbox 360 4GB + Kinect bundle, and two 12-month Xbox Live Gold cards at $48.41 each, a total of $384.52. So you're paying almost $75 for the privilege of laying out small cash now.' And then there's the not insignificant matter of early termination fees."
$0 for not having an Xbox 360 at all. That's the option I'm going for.
Ydco co
To cell phone plans.
So you're paying almost $75 for the privilege of laying out small cash now.
This privilege is valuable to working class families that have a lot of kids but not a lot of savings, especially when a lot of newer console games have been following in PC games' footsteps in eschewing shared-screen multiplayer in favor of LAN or online multiplayer. Thus one has to buy a separate console for each gamer in the family rather than one for the whole family as it used to be in the split-screen era.
Well unless you intend to buy XBL anyway then your making a saving. Dont assume everyone wants a console to play games alone.
You forgot the part where you're forced into the two year agreement for Xbox Live, much like a cell phone contract. You can't have it your way.
Sony is releasing a new console soon. 10 to 1 odds they will release a new version of PSN and a premium version of PSN as well.
this is meant to make people think twice about buying a new PS4 and pay for PSN. why buy new PS4 if i just signed up for a 2 year x-box deal?
the hardcore i play every single kill/hack everyone to death game 7 days a week on every console 10 years back people aren't the target of this
it's people like me who have a PS3 i use only for blu rays and i've been thinking about an x-box with kinect for the kids people are the target of this
You realize you can get a Blu-Ray player for cheaper than the 360, right?
Wait a minute, pay *less* now in exchange for greater incurred expense later on? If only there a way we could do this on a much bigger scale than with just Xboxes... Like put down a small amount now to get the consumer hooked and then have them pay the rest off later. A revolutionary concept indeed...
I've heard of slow news days, but seriously, what is this shit?
They love not having to pay everything up front (lay away, low/no interest financing, etc), even if it is more in the long run, it feels like they are spending less. Because today they save! and long term thinking isn't the American consumers strong point (much like our government).
I think it's a bet that M$ will cash in on, it's never about making money on hardware, and all about making $ on services and accessories. A very mobile industry way of thinking, if you ask me.
Welcome to the 20th and 21st century, this is how all subscription models work.
Or didn't you realize an iPhone really costs $2,000; DVR Equipment fees are really a fleecing, a $20k car really costs $36k, and pest control really costs $240, not $20/month. Gillette razors are also not 5 dollars.
Oh and mortgages are a really bad deal. You pay like 150grand extra, why not just pay cash up front?
The biggest problem, of course, is that you're getting the model with the 4 gig hard drive. That could be a problem even if you don't intend to use the console online. First of all, you won't have the option of hard disk installs (which can make some games much more tolerable in the loading time stakes). Worse, there are a small number of games where you won't even be able to use all the features.
Forza Motorsport 3 and 4 have both shipped on two DVDs. Because the nature of the games doesn't make disk-swapping practical (unlike in an RPG like Blue Dragon or Lost Odyssey), the way Turn 10 managed this was by making the second DVD an optional "content" install. As I know myself from trying to set up a nephew's Christmas present one fraught Christmas morning, you can't actually do the full content install for the Ultimate Edition of Forza 3 or the full edition of Forza 4 on the 4 gig models. There's just not enough space for that and the various OS stuff that the console puts on there. So part of the game's content is unavailable.
The "irony" (and this isn't actually irony at all, I suspect it's fully deliberate) is that in Christmas 2010, a number of UK retailers were heavily pushing a 4 gig 360 + Forza 3 Ultimate Edition bundle (usually with Lego Harry Potter in there as well). They also had a nice stock of the 250 gig hard drives on sale. Of course, the cost of buying a 4 gig console and then the 250 gig hard drive for it was significantly greater than the cost of just buying the 250 gig console.
Sorry for the rant - that was a Christmas morning I'd rather forget. My key point - avoid the 4 gig model even for casual use. Hard drive installs are only getting more common as this generation goes on.
What's a "cell phone plan"? I thought cell phones were pay-as-you-go: a customer who wants a pay phone replacement buys a dumbphone for $30 and then pays $7/mo for a small allotment of minutes, or a customer who wants a land line replacement buys a smartphone for $200 and pays $35/mo for service. (Source: virginmobileusa.com)
If you're using Amazon.com for your prices you'd best be damn sure you're choosing free shipping options. From what I'm seeing that's not universally the case for this stuff.
On the other hand if you actually buy the stuff from a store you're getting 299.99 + 49.96*2 = as close as doesn't matter to $400.
That's still a $50 savings, yes. That works out to 6.25% financing, which is probably on par with most such buy now, pay later deals.
I think what this submission meant to say was "Why you don't want to finance anything above 0%"
Yeah, it'll be the Audrey / iOpener all over again, based on how they enforce that.
William
Sphinx of black quartz, judge my vow.
So, don't buy it now. Don't buy anything you don't really need now. Do this for 6 months. Save all the money that is left. From then on, continue to live as you do now. And suddenly you realize that you don't need your credit card with huge interest rates anymore! And you have suddenly all this interest that you would normally pay to the credit card company all for yourself!! Indeed, why pay $75 so that you have to pay small cash now, but lots more later.
I'm not an Xbox owner but always a potential customer. Is Xbox Live required or can you just play all your games and movies like normal and it is only for online play? I'm assuming certain games require it (MW3? COD?) b/c of their nature of online play, or at least part of the game would if they have a stand alone single player campaign.
Does this version of the Xbox come with wifi built in? I thought I remember a while ago dongles for sale since it initially didn't have it?
With 2 younguns and a couple DS's, iPod/Pad, and a Wii, I'm still not sure the $99 would be worth it for our household/usage. And from what I've seen of my relatives use of the Kinect sensor I think I'll pass. Though it might be fun to play with for some 3D modeling and such.
Yes, this is a predatory "cell phone" style purchase plan. Yes, it's a bad investment. Yes, there are people dumb enough to fall for it. Yes, I think they deserve to be financially punished for sucking at math and common sense.
I've been an Xbox 360 owner for a couple of years. I bought mine second-hand, actually I bought two refurbs for about the same total cost as one brand new unit, then gave the extra one to a friend. I see at least 3-4 Xboxes posted every day on my city's "used crap for sale" RSS feed, and I live in a pretty catatonic Canadian city. I would expect most people within range of a Microsoft store also have a dozen inexpensive used consoles available within walking distance of their home. For $120 you'll even get a 20 to 60gb hard drive with the console, and I've seen the Kinect gadget go for $50 or so. It'll be an older model Xbox, and no they don't catch fire or RROD ten minutes after you start your game. Mine's already got well over two thousand hours of playtime, and it's crashed exactly once, due to a shitty game full of bugs - not the hardware itself. The defective ones were from 2 or 3 hardware revisions ago, and most of those units have already died (or been repaired).
Actually, these days I'm seeing a lot of people selling their old-style Xboxes because they bought the new slim model. I don't know why they do it, but that translates into more cheap second-hand consoles flooding the market. If someone's looking to get into the Xbox for little money, that's the way to go. No contract, no overpriced payment plan, and if three months in you decide you don't like being called a "fat gay nigger cunt" ten times a day by inbred little rugrats, you can resell the cheap console in a matter of minutes.
-Billco, Fnarg.com
Companies understand this common flaw in people: People look at the monthly cost and the upfront cost, but often fail to sum the monthly cost over the lifespan.
Its why people lease cars instead of buying them: its much cheaper to buy then to lease in most cases, but the cost per month of a lease is less. (They are just left with NOTHING at the end of the lease, rather than a car!)
Its why there is "rent to own" furniture places.
Its why people buy "free" android phones or iPhone 3GSs: They don't understand that when you factor in the monthly cost over 2 years, an iPhone 4S only costs only %25 more, not infinity-more.
I'm actually surprised that game consoles only now are getting into into the "Pay a little each month, but it adds up to a lot more" scam yet.
Test your net with Netalyzr
Maybe next there will be a slashdot story telling me that buying my TV from Rent-A-Center is a bad deal, or that Montel Williams Money Mutual Loans might not be such a good deal??? Duh?
Actually, compared to those deals hawked by Troy Aikman, Hulk Hogan, and Montel Williams, the Microsoft deal isn't so bad a ripoff. Some finance guy could probably tell us the interest rate--might be less than a credit card?
So you're paying almost $75 for the privilege of laying out small cash now.
So it's like interest, then. Why is this news?
Is Xbox Live required or can you just play all your games and movies like normal and it is only for online play?
On the Xbox 360, a valid Xbox Live Gold subscription is required for online play or to access Netflix. This is in addition to any subscription that Netflix or a game publisher might charge.
Does this version of the Xbox come with wifi built in?
The current model of Xbox 360 is the Xbox 360 S. It looks like this, and it has b/g/n Wi-Fi. If you bought a new Xbox 360 in the fourth quarter of 2010 or later, it was an Xbox 360 S.
With 2 younguns and a couple DS's, iPod/Pad, and a Wii
Online play is required for multiplayer in a lot of newer games that have no split-screen. To take examples of games for a console that you own: The Wii games Animal Crossing: City Folk and The Conduit are single-player unless you connect to Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection and get another player's friend code. To play together, your two younguns would need to each own a console and a copy of the game.
no one will read it that actually matters.
A lot of people cant do math, so they get suckered into the junky deal.
One thing missed, if you are not an online gamer, you skip the $60.00 a year Xbox live costs so buying it outright is even cheaper for many.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
This only effects people that can't do the math, don't read the fine print, and do not have the intellectual curiosity to question why it's available for $99.
Pretty much the same people that helped cause the housing crisis.
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
Um, $200 + $35 per month is a cell phone plan
It's not a "plan" in the sense of a two-year contract with an early termination fee.
$400 for the phone and paying $10 a month on pay as you go.
A $400 phone sounds like a smartphone, and $10 per month sounds like dumbphone service: few minutes, no data. Since when do the carriers let the user activate dumbphone service on a smartphone? Or what am I missing?
You forgot the part where you're forced into the two year agreement for Xbox Live, much like a cell phone contract. You can't have it your way.
How is it 'forced' when you're accepting an agreement? Is there a guy with a gun making people pick this up?
It's just irritating how many people just come to /. to be anti-MS jackoffs anymore. If you don't want it, don't sign up for it, assholes.
It's forced in the situation described by the previous poster, thus making it invalid, as he further crarified with "you can't have it your way". (Think about the reason to put "in your way" in that sentence.)
So buy a dvd player for $20, and a Wii for $99. No extra payments over 2 years. Wth the money you save every month, buy accessories (extra wiimotes, etc) over time, and hook up with others in the neighborhood to swap games (after all, you can only play one game at a time anyway).
Let's call it what it is, Anti-Social Media.
No, same reason as before –poor people have to make false economies:
At the time of Men at Arms, Samuel Vimes earned thirty-eight dollars a month as a Captain of the Watch, plus allowances. A really good pair of leather boots, the sort that would last years and years, cost fifty dollars. This was beyond his pocket and the most he could hope for was an affordable pair of boots costing ten dollars, which might with luck last a year or so before he would need to resort to makeshift cardboard insoles so as to prolong the moment of shelling out another ten dollars.
Therefore over a period of ten years, he might have paid out a hundred dollars on boots, twice as much as the man who could afford fifty dollars up front ten years before. And he would still have wet feet.
Without any special rancour, Vimes stretched this theory to explain why Sybil Ramkin lived twice as comfortably as he did by spending about half as much every month.
[Sir Terry Pratchett]
Who the fuck cares?
Nerds.
P.S.: I thought we had already established that the /. subtitle should always be quoted in full.
one has three choices when it comes to consoles: Not buy one at all, buy one for each of the kids, or watch the shared console get utterly destroyed in a fight. [...] If the kids want games, that is what the PCs are for.
One likewise has three choices when it comes to gaming PCs: Not buy one at all, buy one for each of the kids, or watch the shared gaming PC get utterly destroyed in a fight. And one still has to buy a copy of each game for each PC.
Truly, if they must buy the lower end console to fit in their budget they are already budgeting improperly. People who budget around "monthly costs" are pretty much doomed to stay or become poor.
Note, this is far different from budgeting for required monthly expenses, like rent, food, and utilities. It becomes a problem when you justify a frivolous expense by the same method you do so for required expenses.
The more intelligent path for people in the situation you describe is to set aside the money needed to buy the desired item and then when it is at hand deciding whether or not to actually buy the item.
One thing I have noted is that people tend to make different decisions when spending money when they have to spend it all up front versus buying it over time. Yet the end cost is the same if not worse, worse mostly because you have now locked up more money permanently. With the save to spend system once the goal is achieved the money returns to the pot to be saved or spent. With the monthly payment process that money is removed from the pot for the duration. You could not interrupt it when necessary and worse you don't have the accumulated funds in case of emergency
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
I chose option 3: don't buy an Xbox and do something useful with your time.
giggity
TFA gives the impression that they enforce it contractually. Even if cracking a 360 were as easy as cracking an Audrey, which I am given to understand is not the case, they would just continue to bill your credit card for either the monthly payments or the early termination fee.
The technological enforcement has gotten tougher since the Audrey; but the real kicker is companies no longer being stupid enough to rely purely on it...
It's been true since the current generation of consoles.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
The PS3 has caught up to them, the service is entirely free. Nintendo doesn't charge for their service. The PC and Mac gaming don't charge to play online. You get everything on their competitors platforms for FREE. So why is Microsoft sitting in the past and trying to charge for people to play online while everyone has moved on? I own all three consoles, and refuse to buy games for my 360 anymore. I just go with PS3 or PC these days, they've caught up, and in a lot of cases, surpassed XBox Live.
So buy a dvd player for $20, and a Wii for $99. No extra payments over 2 years.
Apart from the cost of all the games for the Wii...
No sig today...
Fully off topic but, at this point it should already be [Lord Terry Pratchett]. ...At least.
I was curious to see what it would be like if you did the all at once purchase but put it ona high interest credit card. It works out to be close to 20% interest, with monthly payments of $20. I guess the advantage to doing it this way, is you could put even less money up front ( $20 payment to your credit card company).
Well.. maybe. Or Maybe not. But Definitely not sort of.
Xbox and PS3 are just a form of hardware based DRM. Not very different from steam or any other methods.
Well, the PC DRM is only "from hell" if you buy games with that DRM on it. I don't touch Ubisoft for that very reason, and it was a strong reason against buying games like SC2 (and quite likely Diablo 3 as well). Buy indie titles and you really don't have that problem.
"None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license." --John Milton
seriously, even that makes more sense than most subsidized long term deals - with them you're borrowing from a financing company. same fucking thing. next thing you'll say that furniture rental makes sense.
what this one has going for it is the xbox live subscription.. nothing else.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
Because poor people need an xbox NOW, and can't wait a couple of months, right?
This isn't food, of a roof over their heads, it a video game console!
Isn't this roughly the same as the 2 year contracts for those high end Android-device-du-jour
The smartphone market is different because phones from one or two years ago are seen as the Daddy System and still developed for. The low-end smart phones available on Virgin Mobile's ETF-free $35/mo plans can still run most of the Android games because developers are targeting the low-end hardware. Old consoles and their games, on the other hand, go out of production. Look how fast the original Xbox died after the Xbox 360 came out, or how fast the GameCube died after the Wii came out (Wii for sale in November 2006, last new release for GCN in August 2007). The only console maker that pursues the Daddy System strategy for set-top consoles appears to be Sony, which still supported the PS1 well after the PS2's introduction and the PS2 well after the PS3's.
Yeah but, is there really anyone who wants a 360 at this point who doesn't already have one? I mean, the console has been out for almost 7 years. You can buy one used for next-to-nothing (hell, I've got an old non-HDMI model just sitting in my closet at home). Is there still someone out there still "on the fence" about buying a console that came out in 2005?
What political party do you join when you don't like Bible-thumpers *or* hippies?
It all plays into people's inability to budget properly. Even someone flipping burgers can afford quality living when they're utilizing their funds wisely.
Vimes may have needed to go on cheap boots for a while, but after a while of saving up, he can afford to get the good stuff, and with proper budgeting, he wouldn't ever have to worry about going back to the cheap stuff again.
If the parents have already saved up the cash to pay for the initial $99 down + $15 for the first month, then they only need about $270 more to buy it outright. Assuming they charge it on a card with 18% interest rate and $15/month minimum repayment, they'll pay it off in 2 years and only be out a little over $50 in total interest. For comparison, $75 in total interest on a $270 charge with $15/month repayment represents a 25% rate.
Of course, if they can't afford a cash down payment, then the MS plan would make sense. (though, far less sense than just teaching the kids to enjoy the public library)
your thin skin doesn't make me a troll
Some games require 1 to 2 hours just to get through the opening cut scenes. In the Nintendo 64 era, there were problems with The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask because its roughly 90-minute start-to-save time exceeded many households' 60-minute maximum play sessions. Games with "Dead" or "Solid" in the title can have long times between save points as well.
With everyone talking about the economics of paying up front vs paying over time via monthly fees, I think everyone is missing the real story here:
It's bundled with the Kinect. And that's because the Kinect's sales figures have gone flat. Early adopters bought the hell out of them (even set a record), but then the software failed to materialize and sales have begun to stagnate. This is not a ploy to grab an extra $75, it's a ploy to get Kinect machines in more households. The extra $75 is just tacked on to leverage the risk associated with monthly payment plans.
Why? Maybe MS hopes a larger user base will inspire more Kinect development. They might have decided the Kinect is the "universal remote" in their "Xbox as home entertainment hub" scheme. They could just be trying to move units and recoup their investment.
(probably all of the above)
Cool art gallery, if you're into that sort of thing.
Because poor people need an xbox NOW, and can't wait a couple of months, right?
This isn't food, of a roof over their heads, it a video game console!
Which actually is something the poor need far more than the rich.
Seriously, I earn a decent living. As a result, I like to spend my weekends skydiving, and my vacations renting a house for a week at the mountains. I remember when I didn't have any money (relatively speaking, I know there are truly poor people out there who don't have a roof over their heads), and spending time glued to my TV playing video games was a reasonably cheap form of entertainment.
Entertainment is a human necessity. Food and a roof over your head keeps you physically healthy, entertainment keeps you mentally healthy.
Everyone forgets the price of the TV and games.
Not many/no people have discussed the scale of this xbox hardware cost vs other expenses:
So I've got my $100, err, $300, err, whatever xbox and I'll plug it into my $600 TV. Who cares what the xbox costs, almost all of the cost is in the TV.
Then I'll buy 10 games at $80 each for a mere $800... oh wait the only cost that matters is the games, apparently.
The most important cost is my $150K house to put it in or my urban living apartment at $2000/mo or whatever.
The next most important cost is my car to drive out there and buy the thing which is about $25K plus $200/mo for gas, insurance, maint, whatever
The next most important cost is the cost of games at $800 for ten games at $80 each. Probably more over time.
Then comes the TV at $600 carefully value engineered to require replacement every couple years.
Then comes the xbox itself at $300 to $100, with extreme agony and debate over the $300 or $100 version as if it matters much.
Finally comes subscription at whatever it is ($50/yr?)
Waaaay at the bottom I'll pay an extra $10/year for increased electricity use, increased wear and tear on my $750 couch, whatever.
BTW why exactly am I paying a subscription fee? I already paid for the hardware and the software. Its like trying to convince me to pay a subscription for my dinner, when I already bought the oven and I already bought the pizza. I look forward to the stockholm syndrome explanations for this extreme weirdness.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
Yeah, except my Alfa Romeo came with a blutooth-only remote input that I can't use with my top of the line all-on-one remote. My Ford works just fine with it.
What political party do you join when you don't like Bible-thumpers *or* hippies?
Unlike an online service, you get to OWN the games you buy for the Wii. You can use the savings from the monthly fees to buy a few games and swap them with others, or even resell them. Try doing that with your online game rentals.
Let's call it what it is, Anti-Social Media.
go to college right out of high school
For those who live in a sufficiently large city, the local campus of the state college exists, as do jobs that require only a high school diploma.
I went to a state school, still wound up with $23,000 in loans. They're more affordable, but still difficult to do unless you're also working full time (30 hours of classes a week on top of 40 hours of working is no fun... especially when you consider you're expected to spend double the time on work outside of the classroom that you spend in it).
buy a house before they're 40
One can rent until one has enough money saved up to buy a house with cash.
If you make enough money, yes. Rent isn't all that cheap, even for a small one bedroom or studio.
a car that they need to get to a job
Not necessary. Bicycles, buses, and carpools exist. In fact, I rode a bike to work today.
That may be true if you live in/near the city. Since I started working at age 14, I've only lived within biking distance of work for a total of 9 months. I've only been on a bus route for 2 years (between two different apartments) and both routes would require that I leave 90 minutes earlier and change busses at least 3 times. Plus I would lose an extra half hour at the beginning of the day for arriving too early and have to wait an hour after I clock out to catch the next bus. My time is more valuable than that. Before I moved to this city, there was no public transportation and very, very few other people even commuting in the same direction as I was.
I am a fat ass American techie know it all and I REFUSE to be bullied by Microsoft into PAYING MORE for a discounted machine instead of paying the full price upfront! This is nothing but GREEDY PROFITEERING AND A SCAM!!!! I want a $99.00 XBox and Kinect AND NO CONTRACT!!! I AlSO WANT FREE HEALTH CARE AND FREE RENT! I DESERVE IT!!! I AM LIBERTARIAN!!! RRRRWWWWAAAAAARRR!!!!
Look -- you give in order to get. MS is a business out to make a profit and they are offering a reasonable deal for people who can't afford the full cost out of pocket. Yes, like many things the seemingly too good to be true deal has deferred costs and that aren't obvious at a glance. But, in this case we're talking about tens of dollars extra over the course of a couple years, hardly a huge issue and I think worth it to those who this program was made for. Let's see -- pay a little extra cash over a couple year period, or not have an XBox at all?
I think those that have a problem with this don't have a problem with MS as much as they do with themselves.
This might be a test run to enroll the next generation of consoles solely on that concept....
This brings two advantages to MS: They obviously get more money, and they hamper the used device market. If you HAVE to pay for two years, you are inclined to keep the device for at least as long.
I know that devices are sold at loss, but i think some manager figured some math about A) that the higher income maybe evens out the console and B) they get two potential game sales instead of one...
Totally irrelevant - someone who is in effect renting the use of an xbox because they don't have the extra $100 to buy it isn't going to be spending $100 a year to develop games, plus the cost of a development rig.
Let's call it what it is, Anti-Social Media.
Three problems:
First, unlocked phones don't really exist for CDMA2000, only for GSM/UMTS, because CDMA2000 doesn't require carriers to use removable CSIM cards. Instead, the carrier programs the subscriber's identity directly into the handset and can refuse to perform such activation for any reason, such as if the handset wasn't sold by that carrier. Two of the top three carriers in the United States (Verizon and Sprint) use CDMA2000 without CSIM cards, and the third (AT&T) is despised for other reasons.
Second, even among GSM carriers, unlocked phones aren't widely available in brick-and-mortar stores in the United States. If you're considering buying one sight unseen through mail order, what do you plan to do should you find its display or touch screen unusably unergonomic?
Third, even for GSM phones purchased through mail order, some carriers have been known to "slam" a subscriber to a more expensive plan should the carrier detect that the subscriber is using the SIM for a dumbphone plan in a smartphone.
Even someone flipping burgers can afford quality living when they're utilizing their funds wisely.
Minimum Wage: $7.25/hour. At 40 hours a week (doubtful, all minimum wage factories like McDonalds only hire people part-time to get around regulations requiring them to offer benefits, which, depending on the state, could be someone working up to 35 hours a week or less, 5 whole hours short of a full 40 hour week) that is $290 a week before taxes and shit come out. Figuring 25% is gone right off the top, you're down to $217.50 a week, or $870 a month.
You show me the "quality living" you can find for less than $1000 a month. There's a reason why so many minimum wage earners are still on government assistance even despite having a job.
Don't get me wrong, I am completely in agreement as far as budgeting goes, but people that make such a piss-poor wage are still being subsidized by tax dollars, which is why poverty is so bad in places where Walmart and McDonalds are the main employer in town. These corporations get the benefit of a cheap labor force and likely still collect government money for hiring minorities, thus bringing the amount they're really paying down even further. I used to work overnight at Target years ago, and it was common knowledge that the state was giving Target half of the hourly wage in the form of grants in exchange for hiring a bunch of Serbians that came here under refugee status back in the late 90's. These people were given homes, had taxes annulled, owned their own businesses (that changed hands every so often to avoid taxes) and even drove BMW's and shit to work for their $10 an hour. Which is exactly why Target always gave them preferential treatment when it comes to hiring....unofficially, of course. It was surely just a coincidence that there were 9 of them hired to every single non-Serbian.
The few games that excel at split screen (Halo Reach and Gears 3 are good examples) have noticeable graphics decreases when in split screen. Many companies don't seem to take the effort to build a LOD (Level of Detail) system into their code
Or maybe they are building in a LOD system, and the "noticeable graphics decreases" are the LOD system doing its job when the game is run in two 768x352 windows or four 512x288 windows instead of one 1024x576 window.
PCs = DRM from hell.
XBox = Fucking Microsoft.
PS3 = Fucking Sony.
PCs=software DRM easy to circumvent
XBox = Hardware DRM from hell
PS3= Hardware DRM from hell
FTFY
This could be a lot worse. If you have the cash up front (or can afford to use a credit card) it's not a good deal, but it's not terrible. I'd imagine that Rentacenter wants at least $25 a month for this, and that probably doesn't include XBox Live Gold.
That said, there are two strange things about this. First, I read yesterday that it's only available from Microsoft stores. There are only about 20 in the country, so that doesn't help many people.
More importantly, put a stupid hard drive in thing. The Arcade system wasn't a good idea when it was released, it's not a good idea 5+ years later. How much would it cost to put 80GB drives in the machines? Even with the cloud storage from MS for saved games, 4GB is too small. Want to download and play MassEffect? It's 7 gigs. You can't. Having such a tiny drive kills the ability to play a lot of the stuff MS sells.
Of course, you could always buy a drive for you 360. It costs $100 for the 250GB (which is actually quite a bit saner than the old prices). But if you can afford that, you could probably afford the system without the financing.
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
If Americans did these kinds of calculations, buying cellphones subsidized by carriers wouldn't be the norm in the USA.
you shouldn't be more than 2-3 miles away from the nearest branch
Three miles is still an hour of walking, two hours round trip carrying two weeks' worth of heavy books, and a lot of parents are too scared by media hysteria about "stranger danger" to let their kids leave even the house.
Food and a roof over your head keeps you physically healthy, entertainment keeps you mentally healthy.
Please tell me that it would incorrect to paraphrase the above as "the poor need video games"...
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
There are many forms of entertainment that are arguably better for mental health and demonstrably less expensive than video gaming.
You assume that Vimes would have been able to live on substantially less than AM$37/month (assuming he was already saving about AM$1/month and buying a new pair of boots about once every 10-12 months).
I went to a state school, still wound up with $23,000 in loans.
Did that include room and board? You could always attend the branch campus in the city where your parents live. For example, someone whose parents live in Allen County could attend IPFW and still get a Purdue degree. Even if you're living with relatives, you're not technically a freeter until you leave school.
Rent isn't all that cheap, even for a small one bedroom or studio.
It's still often cheaper than the mortgage payment for a comparable location.
both routes would require that I leave 90 minutes earlier and change busses at least 3 times.
Then make use of these valuable minutes. Buy and carry an affordable laptop so that you can work on a hobby project to add to your portfolio once you start looking for another job. Or buy a "beater" car instead of a new car.
Plus I would lose an extra half hour at the beginning of the day for arriving too early and have to wait an hour after I clock out to catch the next bus. My time is more valuable than that.
Then do like I did and negotiate with your boss to get your hours changed to better match the bus schedule.
Before I moved to this city, there was no public transportation
Then don't move to such a city in the first place. Choose your job by the amenities that the city in which the workplace is located offers. Or move closer to the workplace, which is easier if you rent.
The only thing this 4gb drive would prevent is downloading games off xbox live
If you refuse to download games from Xbox Live Marketplace, then you're back to consoles having no indie games. At that point, you might as well just game on a PC.
One can rent until one has enough money saved up to buy a house with cash.
Sure, you save on Interest, but all money paid on rent goes down the drain instead of building equity and is arguably more than you would be losing in interest. Renting long enough to get a better down payment might be sensible, but avoiding a loan just to give the money to someone else doesn't make a lot of sense to me.
Wait, what?
Dude... when I was a young, broke man, we had better and far cheaper entertainment. We'd hang out somewhere with friends, sometimes playing actual sports (football = $10 or so.) I'd walk in the park with the missus. I'd go to the beach. I'd go hiking. I'd go to the library. There are a zillion ways to get entertainment that is far cheaper and far better for you than sitting stupefied in front of a TV while clutching a gaming controller.
Hell, even hanging around a bar with friends and/or getting laid is cheaper as long as you don't do it every weekend - and that's what a lot of folks do anyway.
I get your point, but seriously? An XBox is not a necessity.
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
all money paid on rent goes down the drain instead of building equity
But how much of your time (which is money) goes down the drain if you find a different job farther from where you live and then have to spend every day stuck in traffic? It's harder to move closer to your workplace if you're tied to real estate that you own.
Depends on where you live.
$7/hr in Mississippi or Arkansas is actually quite livable - I've done it.
$28/hr in New York City or San Francisco is starvation wages, in spite of being 4x larger.
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
The reasons are the same no matter what. I have seen people on welfare with full cable packages, 2 dogs( not little ankle biters but large 100#+ ones), a litter of kids, no car and no damn food in the house. Oh and lets not forget that cell phone bill because they just HAD to have a iPhone. Piss poor budgeting and purchases are the biggest problem.
"Remember, politicians and diapers should be changed often and for the same reason."
Because poor people need an xbox NOW, and can't wait a couple of months, right?
This isn't food, of a roof over their heads, it a video game console!
Which actually is something the poor need far more than the rich.
Seriously, I earn a decent living. As a result, I like to spend my weekends skydiving, and my vacations renting a house for a week at the mountains. I remember when I didn't have any money (relatively speaking, I know there are truly poor people out there who don't have a roof over their heads), and spending time glued to my TV playing video games was a reasonably cheap form of entertainment.
Entertainment is a human necessity. Food and a roof over your head keeps you physically healthy, entertainment keeps you mentally healthy.
The Amish seem to be doing just fine.
An Xbox 360 with Xbox Live will import the logged-in user's previous Xbox Live Arcade purchases, even if made on another Xbox 360 console. Wii doesn't do that.
With gas at $4 a gallon running around town - or especially out of town to the beach or something - isn't exactly free. Plus many of the actually poor have to depend on public transportation, which has it's own set of costs - especially in time and travel range. Something that can be done from home has lots of advantages.
TODO: Something witty here...
Dude... when I was a young, broke man, we had better and far cheaper entertainment. We'd hang out somewhere with friends, sometimes playing actual sports (football = $10 or so.) I'd walk in the park with the missus. I'd go to the beach. I'd go hiking. I'd go to the library. There are a zillion ways to get entertainment that is far cheaper and far better for you than sitting stupefied in front of a TV while clutching a gaming controller.
That's all true, you get no argument from me. Although you don't always have friends available, or a place nearby where you can throw the football around without getting killed by passing cars (especially true if you're too young to go out by yourself), or the weather sucks, or you're sick and need to stay in bed...
I get your point, but seriously? An XBox is not a necessity.
I never said an xbox was a necessity. I said entertainment is a necessity, and I said the xbox entertainment value is higher for someone with no money than for someone with money. It serves the function of always-available cheap entertainment pretty well.
someone who is in effect renting the use of an xbox because they don't have the extra $100 to buy it isn't going to be spending $100 a year to develop games
But it does affect the selection of games available to customers. There are plenty of worthwhile games that don't make it out of the PC and XBLIG ghetto because the developer isn't a big enough company. Let me know when any of the Humble Indie Bundles make it to Wii.
Time value of money exists! Read all about it!
Preach it. I took a job in a different city and moved here soon after to start work, while my wife and kids stayed put through the end of the school year. I find myself sitting in an empty house, in a situation where it'd be dumb to buy a TV when all my furniture will be moving here within the month. The library is a lifesaver. There's a bus stop near my house, and it's cheap to ride to another part of the city and just walk around to look at stuff. If I have to have passive entertainment, I can watch shows on Netflix (and I bet 90% of households who would want to buy an XBox already have a PC and Internet connection capable of supporting it).
I grew up with video games and I love 'em, but they're hardly something you've gotta have. For the history of the world up through 30 years ago, people managed to entertain themselves without them. It's still possible, you know?
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
That's because in your day, video games probably didn't exist or were very primitive and niche (depending on how old you are) so of course those other things were the only option. In modern times, gaming has become quite a significant form of entertainment (and casual titles have certainly gotten rather mainstream) but of course there are still plenty of sports buffs and bar hoppers too.
You do not even need to pay anything for some video games as you can always find countless of full blown free titles online (browser based titles, Free to play MMO's, freeware games, etc) if you know where to look (so even the $99 Xbox 360 is not needed). I would say that's very handy during a day where you are stuck inside because of weather conditions or your friends are just not available.
On a side note, there always seems to be this misconception that entertainment is unnecessary when in reality, your mental health depends on it. Namely, boredom would make you go nuts.
I think of those consoles as a dongle that lets you play the games. It's not like you don't know that you've got restrictions.
Besides, I got tired of buying a new video card every year just to keep up with the latest titles. I know for a fact that any console game will run on the console.
---
ECHELON is a government program to find words like bomb, jihad, plutonium, assassinate, and anarchy.
I would think that the people springing for a $99 xbox probably didn't buy a $299 or $399 or $459 xbox bundle in a previous life, so they probably have nothing to "import".
Also, you can't sell or trade in or share your xbox purchases, unlike a Wii game disk.
Let's call it what it is, Anti-Social Media.
Why? Perhaps the reason they're doing the deal is so the hundred dollars for the XNA license hits them less hard up front.
As for your development rig comment, anyone with Windows in effect has a "developer rig" capable of doing 360 development.
I'll admit I didn't read the article. If it comes with a contract they can go fuck themselves.
bend like the reed
In December of 2011 a local store had the 4GB console with Kinect for $299 plus a $75 gift card.
On top of that there was a stackable $30 off making it $269.99.
Since 4G is not much, I asked about the 250GB. No specials...$399. Ouch.
But the guy said what he's been doing is selling people the 320GB add-on HDD. It goes for $129, had a 15%off coupon ($19.50) and a stackable $20 off coupon getting it down to $90.49. I then applied my $75 gift card making it $15.49.
So, the bottom line was a 324GB Xbox with Kinect for $270 + $15.50 = $285.50. A bit less than the regular $299 for the 4G and a damn sight better than the $399 for the 250G bundle. This was FAR cheaper than anything I found online.
Additionally, I still have yet to pay Microsoft a penny for a membership. I've signed up for Live (which is free) so I get updates and such but so far I haven't played online. Thus far my time has been occupied with Skyrim, Portal and other stand-alone games. I keep getting offers for Live Gold but I just ignore them. I really haven't missed getting my ass kicked online (I'm a crap gamer, btw). That said, I also have a PS3 Slim that I can play online with for free if I feel the need.
You can find bargains if you are willing to wait. And if you've been living without a console for a long time there are plenty of old games available used (I'm playing through the Orange Box right now).
So if you are on a budget and MUST have online play, get a PS3. If you really really want the Kinect do not despair...you can probably keep yourself entertained with single player games for the Xbox for quite a while and avoid the monthly fees like I have.
A million times, this. The PC indies are fantastic and often available DRM-free. Dungeons of Dredmor, Torchlight, and Lone Survivor are all excellent examples.
Ugh... Sick of all these knee-jerk "It's a terrible deal" articles from assholes that haven't done their research properly.
First of all, if you get your xbox this way, it's warrantied for the two years you're under contract, compared to one year for the usual retail package. The extra year's warranty retails for $50.
When you figure in the extended warranty, the price gap (using the author's Amazon sale prices) shrinks to about $25. If you use the usual retail price of things it actually works out to be $10 cheaper to take the subsidized deal.
Secondly, yes, if you get it on sale and can pay up front, it's cheaper in the long-run. Welcome to the world of finance, asshat. In the end, for everyone else, you're paying a premium of just over a $1.04 per month for the privilege of having the thing now, rather than later. Try getting anything even close to that on a credit card -- at even a relatively modest interest rate of 9%, credit works out to $422 over the course of 2 years.
Nearly every goddamn article and blog on this acts as if Microsoft if fleecing everyone, when in fact the terms are very reasonable, if not generous. Of course they're counting on re-couping the costs elsewhere (games, peripherals, continued growth of XBL), but so be it. The fact that they expect to expand their revenue in this way is not underhanded, allows them to offer a better deal than credit companies, and frankly, is a good business move.
If you have philosophical differences with entering into such contracts yourself, then fine, but that doesn't mean this offer isn't valuable for other folks.
Lessee, one could:
- give a minor (unable to sign contracts) a pre-paid $100 credit card
- go to the store where it's being sold, pay w/ the pre-paid CC and use its number to sign up for payment of the XBox Live contract
If you make it out of the store and the store can't track you down and Microsoft can't find the XBox based on its serial number (you'd have to ensure that it never connected to the internet while running Microsoft's software) it might be workable.
Would one be able to install XBox Media Center on such a machine?
William
Sphinx of black quartz, judge my vow.
You're claiming you've never heard of a cell phone plan?
No, I was making a figure of speech. With no-contract service becoming affordable, it has become practical to shop entirely from the prepaid rack.
There are many forms of entertainment that are arguably better for mental health and demonstrably less expensive than video gaming.
Your hand doesn't count.
Remember kids, it's all fun and games until someone commits wholesale galactic genocide.
Other related titles from the "Well no duh" category:
"Why you don't want to buy on credit" and
"Why you don't want that free cell phone" and
"Why you don't want that really cheap ink jet printer"
-- Senior Software Engineer, Attorney appearance services, locallawyerapp.com.
If it were explained to me exactly why my "suggestions are not always even remotely reasonable", then I could use such an explanation against others who make unreasonable suggestions.
Games which require subscriptions (Final Fantasy XI and Phantasy Star Universe) do not require Xbox Live Gold subscriptions
Thank you for the correction. But why does Netflix require Gold?
"A poor man can only afford low quality boots that are $10 and last for about a year. A rich man can afford good boots that cost $60 and will last him for a decade. In that decade, the poor man will have spent more money on boots, and will still have wet feet."
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
spidersoft, taleworlds
i am sure there's plenty more... checking out dungeons now
Fuck it. I'll take the a subprime mortgage to buy a house!
Privacy is terrorism.
hands free gaming...
What are they? Buying a $50 game that is pure escapism (great for a "mental health vacation") - some games for up to 50-60 hours of entertainment - is about as cheap as it gets. Entertaining yourself for around/under $1 per hour is pretty darn good. And if you wait and don't buy games brand new, that 50-60 hours can be had for $20-$30 often. I have also wasted plenty of time on games that were under $5 or even free.
"But this one goes to 11!"
It doesn't work that way. They put your transaction through a "hold" before posting it, and you can not put a hold on a prepaid card.
"When life gives you lemons, don't make lemonade. Make life take the lemons back!" -- Cave Johnson
Path of Exile
I think we need to take a gander at interest rates. At the retail prices you pay roughly 50-60 bucks more over 2 years. Considering that the bundle is roughly about 400 when you take tax into account. You are paying roughly 5-10 percent interest. Thats better than some student loans these days. So in reality, this bundle deal isn't all that bad. Basically Microsoft is making 5-10 percent on their money invested in you as the consumer. If you ETF you pay less pretty simple setup. It's actually better than most of the cell phone deals out there.
This contract is better than most cell phone companies. Because if you pay it off sooner you pay less, and the interest rate equivalent that you are paying is roughly about 5-10 percent which is nothing in the grand scheme of things.
I would think that the people springing for a $99 xbox probably didn't buy a $299 or $399 or $459 xbox bundle in a previous life
And I would think that Microsoft would have engineered its consoles better to avoid three-red-quadrants failure, but RROD is the reality.
anyone with Windows in effect has a "developer rig" capable of doing 360 development.
I thought one also needed a gaming PC (suitably fast CPU, gaming video card) instead of a homework-and-Facebook PC (slow CPU, possibly Atom, with an Intel IGP) in order to be able to run the shader model needed for 360 development. The sort of person who buys an Xbox 360 on contract is probably the same sort of person who, say, uses a netbook or a 5+ year old paid-for PC as a primary PC.
simply shocked to learn the someone who pays for something over time pays m,ore then someone who pays it all up front.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
That's only like 10-12% interest on that loan. Which is basically what this is. You're buying with a down payment and then paying monthly payments... on a console.
What are they?
The library is free.
Walking in parks is free.
Joining local clubs is often free.
Shooting hoops at a park is awful cheap, on an hourly basis.
If you have the ability to play video games you have a TV. Over the air TV is free.
Hanging out with friends can be free.
Learning to play the guitar is as cheap as a used guitar.
Jogging is cheap.
etc...
Microsoft could license the Kinect to Sony for use on the playstation 3. I bet *THAT* would stimulate the production of software that uses it! I would love to have the Kinect on the PS3, because the MOVE controller is stupid.
Using just the numbers in the summary and assuming it is a simple loan with $99.00 down, $284 financed, and treating the $74.00 difference as interest, the interest rate is roughly 13%. That is the same or better than many credit cards. Before you start storming the walls, check out what the interest rate would be if you put it on your credit card or a no documentation, no credit check loan.
And, remember, you can't pay a penalty and be rid of a loan and keep the device. The device would be collateral and if you defaulted on the loan, they would come and take it back and keep all the money you had paid thus far.
Really, this isn't a bad deal considering the alternative financing available.
There is no "-1 offended" or "-1 you don't agree with me" mod options for a reason.
I was with you right up until this last one.
In most US cities...this just is not really a viable option. Too far (and dangerous) to ride a bike (not even considering the weather in the area)....and public transportation is just not a realistic way to actually to / from work in an orderly manner.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
What do you consider "quality living"? I am single and live in an expensive area in Tampa, FL in a large 2 bedroom, 1 bath apartment that I pay $885 per month on, plus I have a garage at $100 per month. That is less than $1000 for housing and I am living large. I could move to a 1 bedroom, 1 bath apartment in a middle class neighborhood and pay around $700. My basic utilities would be about $150. That is $850 per month for housing and utilities, which leaves$150 for food, etc. That is tight but doable. If I go to a lower class neighborhood, I can get a place for between $400 and $650. And, if one is making minimum wage, one is in the lower class. I worked at a company making large commercial signs out of metal (real physical labor) and made $8.50 an hour. I have been there.
Why are so many minimum wage earners still on government assistance? They waste money on cigarettes, drugs, alcohol, and eating out at fast food restaurants. They have sex for recreation and end up with kids. They spend a lot on entertainment and communication in the form of cable TV, cell phones, and game systems. They buy $2000.00 cars, spend thousands to paint it and modify it to accept over-sized wheels, then rent rims and tires.
There is no "-1 offended" or "-1 you don't agree with me" mod options for a reason.
You might have trouble connecting the Kinect to you computer as well. From what I understand there are two Kinect models, the stand alone and the one that comes with a new xbox. The standalone can be connected to a computer it has a USB cable and a PSU. The other one has a proprietary USB cable that also provides power to it, I don't know if that will work with a PC.
Fiction is a bad place to pull examples.
A pair of $10.00 boots can be resoled with leather for about $1.00. If Sam Vimes buys a new pair of boots every time his soles wore out, he would be considered a wasteful fool.
There is no "-1 offended" or "-1 you don't agree with me" mod options for a reason.
One who throws out boots because the soles have worn out is a fool for not having them resoled for a tenth the price.
There is no "-1 offended" or "-1 you don't agree with me" mod options for a reason.
Figuring 25% is gone right off the top
Effective tax rates are much lower than the top tax bracket for a given income. A large fraction of the population pays no income tax, instead paying only FICA at 7.7%. Federal income tax starts only after the standard deduction, which is almost $6k, so you end up paying federal income tax only on $7.4k with a minimum wage job where you work 51 weeks a year for 35 hours a week. That's $738, or an effective tax rate of 5.5%. In all, in a state without income tax this person would pay about 13.2% in total tax -- assuming there are no additional deductions or credits. That's $11,233 per year in take-home pay.
The Amish, like every other culture, have a variety of things to do to pass the time and stave off boredom. I believe that the parent was trying to say people need entertainment of some for good mental health. e.g. playing ball and stick for a few hours is more healthy than staring at a blank wall.
Just as a note the Amish tend to be reasonably wealthy: virtually no costs but produce extra to sell. Check out the stories on the news sometimes about extravagant Amish kids who are experiencing their year outside the community.
No one said the example should be taken literally, only that it illustrated the point that sometimes (as with this Xbox) the cheaper item is a false economy, and that sometimes poor people in not being able to afford the flat cost of the more expensive item are forced into the false economy.
Besides, I got tired of buying a new video card every year just to keep up with the latest titles. I know for a fact that any console game will run on the console.
I'm pretty weary of that myth. Three years ago I built a computer with fairly reasonable specs, an ATI 4870 (was about $270) and a Core 2 Duo E6540 (about $150) and incidentals including memory, motherboard, etc all for about $800. To this date it's still running recent games just fine. The only people stuck in the upgrade rut are those that see running a game at anything other than max detail at 100fps as not being able to play the game, which is ridiculous.
Granted $800 is more than a $600 launch day PS3, but I can also use it for, well, everything I could need a computer for. I imagine someone with a lot more money could get even more ahead of the curve.
More Twoson than Cupertino
Your ability to read a metaphore for what it is is 0?
This is just a loan. A loan ends up costing more money that paying things upfront. This is a well-known fact.
Why is this news on slashdot?
What are they? Buying a $50 game that is pure escapism (great for a "mental health vacation") - some games for up to 50-60 hours of entertainment - is about as cheap as it gets. Entertaining yourself for around/under $1 per hour is pretty darn good. And if you wait and don't buy games brand new, that 50-60 hours can be had for $20-$30 often. I have also wasted plenty of time on games that were under $5 or even free.
Here's a suggestion: Musical instruments.
When I visit my friends with games systems, the routine is the same... bunch of guys sitting around staring vacuously at a screen, occasionally passing a controller around.
When my friends visit me, it's more likely that people grab one of the 20 different cheap instruments sitting on the bookcase in the living room and we have a jam session.
-1 Uncomfortable Truth
In regards to the video cards, that just comes down to getting what you pay for. You don't have to buy a vid card every year to keep playing the newest games. If you don't update, then at some point you won't be able to set your games to max settings. If your goal is to have the best graphics possible, that's no good for you. But if you are content with console graphics, then a vid card that is 3 or 4 years old is still going to deliver better than the consoles can right now.
My vid card is about 3 years old now I think. It's a 4870 that I got for around $250. It plays Skyrim at 40-50 fps on the High preset. Very High and Ultra cause the framerate to drop too low. I think that's 4xAA, the texture quality looks beautiful and I am playing at 1080p. I could have spent the $280 on a console instead and been playing games at 720p or less and 2xAA or no AA. Graphics aren't all there is to gaming, but when it comes down to picking a vid card vs a console, the graphics are an important part of the consideration.
1 (short ton / firkin) = 89.1432354 slugs / keg
There are going to be a LOT of people refusing to keep paying when their 360 dies outside of the 1-year warranty, but within the 2-year contract. Good luck, Microsoft, this is just going to turn into another PR nightmare.
In Soviet Russia, dot slashes YOU!
The only thing surprising about these numbers is he's proved what I'll describe as a decent offer to it's target market.
It's right to note the savings that can be made if you buy in cash from Amazon, but he is wrong to use it for the direct comparison and the fact that there is a price difference between Amazon and retail proves it. There is a reason some people are willing to pay more to buy from a physical store, maybe it's comfort with the warranty, maybe they don't like the mail man, but I doubt there's anybody in the US who is not familiar with Amazon yet still some people pay more to buy retail, ergo there is value there.
Using his figures, the pay-now price is $419.97 so with $99 deposit it's a loan of $320.97 repaid over 2 years so the APR is 11.25%*. I wouldn't go for that but then I'm not the target market for this deal. Compare to alternative finance options available so easily and for such small amounts, that's a decent rate. A comparison-site lookup shows a really good credit card rate being 12.9% (UK here, YMMV), unless you have a stellar credit rating. Even then, the more realistic comparison given the nature of this is to store credit, where you start talking about 29.9% being a good rate (oh boy does it get worse).
The termination fees aren't punitive either, at a quick glance they appear to effect a full repayment of the principal and interest to-date. This equates with the most favourable of the other finance options, generally it's either that or also pay the interest due for the remainder of the period plus an "administration" fee.
That's not to suggest I encourage taking credit for non-essentials, but the salient point is that this deal appears to be at least as good as the alternatives for those who are going to do something similar anyway.
* Strictly-speaking it's probably slightly higher since the second-year Gold subscription would be purchased a year after initial purchase, so that part is only a one-year loan.
When I moved recently, I decided to make the jump to an HTPC setup. Therefore, I was suddenly in the market for 3-4 Xbox 360's to act at Media Center extenders.
The going rate for a used Xbox at a retail store was around $179 at the time. However, searching in my local area on Craigslist, there were plenty listed in the $70 range, and I was able to negotiate down to an average price of $40 per Xbox 360.
Unless the Xbox 360 were a gift, you could save a ton of money going this route. I was even able to make sellers show me the Xbox plugged in, working, and able to login to Xbox live.
I did observe that most of the folks that were selling their Xbox 360's for pennies on the dollar were folks that probably shouldn't have bought them in the first place. In at least one case, I didn't drive nearly as hard of a bargain as I could have.
Do they actually have most of those in the parts of the US where poor people live? Here in the UK, libraries and free clubs have been closing down and many areas didn't really have that much in the way of parks in the first place.
SC2?
I'm guessing you mean Starcraft 2 and not Supreme Commander 2?
As long as you don't mind settling for 8 year old graphics that can not improve. All a console dose it set the graphics low enough so it will run smoothly, whereas on a PC you have to manually lower graphics to where it will run smooth, but will still look better then on a console. And other then select titles (i.e crysis) you really only need to upgrade graphic card every 2-3 years.
Some people don't mind playing with 8 year old graphics though. This is why I only buy party games for my consoles.
It's a 2-year contract, not a 'requirement'. Breaking the contract simply results in a hefty early-termination fee.
LegendMUD
That sounds great, but what about people who have zero musical talent? I have played piano, bass, and guitar (none more than mediocre unfortunately) and can tell you that engaging in a hours long "jam session" with people who are not interested in playing musical instruments is about as fun to them as the video games are to you. Not everyone can, nor should play musical instruments. Keep handing a bunch of folks with little to no talent musical instruments and encouraging them to keep playing and soon you will have the next version of American Idol.
"But this one goes to 11!"
But, like I showed, the example itself is false. And, in this case, the example doesn't apply because one is not getting a "cheaper" XBox. Rich or poor, one gets the same quality device. It is only how one pays for it that is different.
What you fail to see is that this is just another form of financing hardware via a contract for service. And, as far as financing goes, it is pretty good. It is less than 15%APR on the 2 years of the contract. One can buy one's way out of the contract and if one defaults on the contract, one loses the service, but gets to keep the hardware.
There is no "-1 offended" or "-1 you don't agree with me" mod options for a reason.
Oh, I also forgot to add my original point was entertainment bang for it's buck - and how video games provide it. Collecting even 10 used instruments would be far larger investment than a video game console and a few games. That said it is a great idea, about 50% of my circle of friends are professional musicians and I would prefer a jam session to a video game session personally. (But wanted to make sure I reiterated my original point.)
"But this one goes to 11!"
Poor people should avoid expenses like an xbox
No one should ever borrow money for unnecessary expenses. And then only for those necessary expenses that will make living easier on the long run.
A toy is no such expense. Neither is a car by the way. My first car was a $1000 Suzuki Swift off which I could pull off another 40k miles.
If you're poor, you should buy books, which will make you intellectually as rich as king for a very low money.
If you really really need to play videogames, there are lots of vintage systems you can have for a fraction of these $100, the entertainment value of which was the max in their time. You can avoid the pop culture tie-ins, they wouldn't make sense now and they suck as much as current days' pop culture tie-ins do, however, classics like bomberman, sonic, mario and others are still playable.
Besides, I got tired of buying a new video card every year just to keep up with the latest titles. I know for a fact that any console game will run on the console.
I'm pretty weary of that myth. Three years ago I built a computer with fairly reasonable specs, an ATI 4870 (was about $270) and a Core 2 Duo E6540 (about $150) and incidentals including memory, motherboard, etc all for about $800.
Hmm. Interesting. 4 years ago I bought a $250 Xbox 360 and it plays all the latest games today. 6 years ago I bought a Dell XPS M170 and found that I couldn't play the newest expansion for WoW on it about 3 years ago. I'm pretty sure this isn't a myth.
by Mike Buddha -- Someday the mountain might get him, but the law never will.
What are they?
The library is free.
Walking in parks is free.
Joining local clubs is often free.
Shooting hoops at a park is awful cheap, on an hourly basis.
If you have the ability to play video games you have a TV. Over the air TV is free.
Hanging out with friends can be free.
Learning to play the guitar is as cheap as a used guitar.
Jogging is cheap.
etc...
This is all well and good but you fail to factor in how much more expensive things get when you get arrested for tea-bagging your vanquished foe when shooting hoops at the park. Or jogging. Video games are WAAAAAAAY cheaper.
by Mike Buddha -- Someday the mountain might get him, but the law never will.
Well, you did buy a dell... and it was a laptop.
This is not the funny you're looking for.
You could look at porn on the "free internet" at libraries....
This is not the funny you're looking for.
No, same reason as before –poor people have to make false economies:
At the time of Men at Arms, Samuel Vimes earned thirty-eight dollars a month as a Captain of the Watch, plus allowances. A really good pair of leather boots, the sort that would last years and years, cost fifty dollars. This was beyond his pocket and the most he could hope for was an affordable pair of boots costing ten dollars, which might with luck last a year or so before he would need to resort to makeshift cardboard insoles so as to prolong the moment of shelling out another ten dollars.
Therefore over a period of ten years, he might have paid out a hundred dollars on boots, twice as much as the man who could afford fifty dollars up front ten years before. And he would still have wet feet.
Without any special rancour, Vimes stretched this theory to explain why Sybil Ramkin lived twice as comfortably as he did by spending about half as much every month.
[Sir Terry Pratchett]
The only problem with the story is that if the man bought the $10 shoes, he could save up for the $50 shoes, so by the time his $10 shoes wore out, he could afford $50 shoes, and then save again for when he needed new shoes.
Yes, if he was rich, cool. But he's not, so he needs to learn to live within his means, smartly. Sort of like the rest of us poor people.
Be seeing you...
I've been playing video games since 1985 when I had program them myself on my CoCo2. I've bought most consoles that have been out since then, often taking paper routes or begging my parents. (I was 8 in 1985, my resume wasn't really filled out.)
You can talk all about frame rates and resolution until your screen breaks, but that doesn't make it a great system. What your response says to me is that you don't actually play games yourself, but your favorite is to talk about your frame rates and scores on some benchmarking website. I don't even know where those are anymore.
And no, I don't play on my PC anymore. I gave up on that shit ten years ago. I play on my consoles in my living room. (Not that PCs can't plug into a TV.)
---
ECHELON is a government program to find words like bomb, jihad, plutonium, assassinate, and anarchy.
True, but if you don't pay the early-termination fee, then we're back to court.
True.
LegendMUD
Not exactly.
Video Games are cheap entertainment.
The Poor need cheap entertainment.
So video games can satisfy "The Poor"s need for cheap entertainment, but there is other cheap entertainment that could do the same (basic cable, sitting around talking to friends, etc).
Pulp Audio Weekly - Geek News and Reviews
Steam is fucking crap. I'm so sick of being unable to play half my games every time my internet connection craps out (because the lines provider cut my line - again - while screwing with someone else's).
For a site about things like basic rights, Slashdot users sure do like to censor "dissent".
HEY GUYS DON'T GET A MORTGAGE. You pay less now but end up paying 3x more by the end!
Hey guys, don't get a loan or lease-to-own on a car. You pay less now but in the end you pay more!
OMG GUYS everyone is trying to scam you!
Don't get a credit card or a loan, because you're just going to pay more later!
Like what, reading?
Unfortunately, the is a very large, powerful, well-funded, and clever group of people who devote their careers towards making people think they need XBoxes and iPhones and Air Jordans. You see their messages every hour of every day of your waking life. Advertising works. If you think it doesn't work on you, that just means it's working really well.
So no, poor people might not need video games the way they need food, but they think they do, and it's not their fault.
You're confusing the ability to test XNA games for the 360 on your PC as a requirement, rather than a mere convenience.
I thought the typical use case was to get the game feature-complete on the PC and then buy the $99 per year App Hub certificate to port it to the 360. Are you talking about buying the certificate before writing the first line of code? Or are you talking about getting the game feature-complete in an environment other than XNA (such as Pyglet), buying the certificate, and doing a complete line-by-line rewrite of the game logic by hand in C# while writing a new graphics engine for it?
Most indie games suck, we only hear about the good ones on slashdot, not the vast wasteland of puzzle game clones done by nerds with no real game ideas of his own.
Entertainment is quite necessary for the mind, but buying a video game console to get it is not.
Got my first video game console in 1979 - an Atari 2600. My parents saved up for months to afford the ~$200 price tag, and we were allowed to play it after dinner and homework... After that , it was a TI-99/4A (where video entertainment for me consisted of transcribing game code in BASIC from magazines so I could play 'em), and then the Commodore 64 gained a spot.
There was this big video game-less spot in my life, where I was too busy living it out there to bother. I was also too broke most of the time to get new games, or new equipment, etc. So, I made my own entertainment.
Years pass, and eventually I get ahead. For awhile, I was up to my eyeballs in Quake, Quake II, the Weapons Factory MOD, then I'm doing dev on an Unreal Tournament port for the MOD... yeah, I played a bit hard for awhile on the PC.
Th summary? It wasn't the only form of entertainment, nor did I let it suck down the budget - especially when I couldn't afford to do so.
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
I'm starting to agree with you that putting enough effort into a work generally requires making it one's day job as opposed to a side hobby. However, lack of faith that a developer will have access to a market in which to derive revenue from the work discourages developers from making it one's day job. How would you like to have worked on a game eight hours a day for 250 days only to be told that the platforms' gatekeepers don't want to make your game available to the public?
You can put the Steam client into offline mode and play your Steam games.
You only ever have to launch the game through Steam once with it online. After that you can play with no internet connection.
Did you really not know this?
Why is it so hard to only have politicians for a few years, then have them go away?
OK good. I'm not on board with video games being anything but a luxury unless they stop selling playing cards. :)
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
That sounds great, but what about people who have zero musical talent? I have played piano, bass, and guitar (none more than mediocre unfortunately) and can tell you that engaging in a hours long "jam session" with people who are not interested in playing musical instruments is about as fun to them as the video games are to you. Not everyone can, nor should play musical instruments. Keep handing a bunch of folks with little to no talent musical instruments and encouraging them to keep playing and soon you will have the next version of American Idol.
For those people, I've got things like recorders, whistles, xylophones, hand drums, rattles, tambourines, rain sticks, single stringed instruments and a snake charmers pipe.
Everyone can and should play musical instruments. It's good for you. Where I live, the "kitchen party" lifestyle is accepted and commonplace, and it's a hell of a lot healthier way to spend an evening than playing video games or watching other people perform on TV.
-1 Uncomfortable Truth
Or, maybe buy a frisbee instead? There's plenty of fun that can be had for very little cost. It does require a tad bit of effort and sometimes a little creativity.
Oh, wait, this is /. Instead of a frisbee, buy a couple of D&D booklets, some pencils and some notepads and you can have hundreds of hours of entertainment for a fraction of the cost of an XBox with no games.
Is anyone surprised? The console history for add-on controls is abysmal. Even the laser-guns during the NES generation were barely used, and many of those were bundled with the console. Even the non-traditional control scheme of the Wii is underutilized, and that was the standard deployment.
The Kinect needed to be released this generation as a "get familiar with this technology", and then they needed to announce the XBox720 half a month later, with promises that every 720 would come with Kinect technology standard (built into the unit). Then, developers could get familiar with it, and you might expect a good roll-out for the next generation. But, it was always doomed on 360.
However, lack of faith that a developer will have access to a market in which to derive revenue from the work discourages developers from making it one's day job.
The easiest way to make it your day job is to work for an established developer and stop obsessing about being the "one guy in the garage" that makes it big, that rarely happens.
If that means moving, move. I know you have a local support system and probably have issues with interviewing, but that's the reality. You might be able to work remotely, but will probably still have to travel to interview...
How would you like to have worked on a game eight hours a day for 250 days only to be told that the platforms' gatekeepers don't want to make your game available to the public?
the gatekeepers remember the crash of 84....don't you? Crappy knockoffs made for a quick buck, even the worst games today suck less than some of the crap for the 2600.
Simply put, they don't want a bunch of 14 year olds making penis games or tetris knockoffs for their systems. They want a minimum level of polish and expertise... they want professionals, not hobbyists, if that shuts out someone like you, so be it.
PC gaming 10 years ago is a very different story from today. If you have a desktop PC with a mid range discrete video card you'll be good for about 4 years. You wont be playing on max settings at the end of it's life cycle but 4 years is reasonable. A Core2 duo an 8800 GT and 4 gb of memory can play any game out there today and that's mid range equipment almost 5 years ago.