Now Official: Microsoft cut XBox price down to $200 today (5/15)

[Shagger]

I'll save my money for a backlit GBA

My Afterburner kit should be shipping this week!

In the immortal words of little Anakin Skywalker "Yippee!"

 

[TerryMathews]

The Xbox is not a bad system by any measure... I can remember the game selection on my PS2 6 months after launch. It seems as though the only PS2 game I though was any good was Midnight Club. *SHUDDER*. Looking back, Fantavision was pretty good, but it wasn't worth the $40 asking price.

The Xbox is off to a good start. Having it be an MP3 player kicks ass too, even if you do have to rip all of your MP3s on it. It's DVD playing facilities are far superior to the PS2s. Not having to hold down the FF button to continuously FF is awesome after 2 years of the way the PS2 does it.

The way I look at it is, buy whichever system has the game makes you want on it. Xbox is going to have more Sega, period. Sony has Square, Namco (Currently, that might change), and a few others. If you want to play Time Crisis II, the only way to go is PS2. If you want JSRF or Robotech, get an Xbox.

People get way too worked up over video game consoles. Personally, I say buy em both.

 

[Startide Rising]

The XBox is HOT.

For those people who want to hack their XBOX, change its features, add to its features, or download items to improve their Xbox, you can visit this place.

As to those who hate XBox simply because its an MSFT product, get over the jealousy. If you really want to get back as MSFT, you would buy an XBox (because its a price leader loss to MSFT) and then hack it into an Uber PCgameMachine/HomeTheatreController/TIVO (another loss to MSFT since you steal sales from the official licensees). The first hack product for it has already appeared in Japan's Akihabara district.... That gives me the hot!!!

 

[dimwit]

Looks like GC is the real victim, it is a poor third to PS2 and Xbox, and Xbox has the built in HD, ethernet and plays DVD movies great.

 

[Scyber]

<< The Xbox is off to a good start. Having it be an MP3 player kicks ass too, even if you do have to rip all of your MP3s on it. >>



That would be cool, if it was an MP3 player. Too bad its not.

-Scyber

 

[locutus4]

definetly better choice than the shame cube! The ONLY game coming out that i want is Resident Evil and thats it until fall when Zelda or MArio or whatever it is comes out, but it will most likely be delayed like every other Nintendo product.

 

[Angrymarshmello]

<< If anything is going the way of the Dreamcast, it's the Gamecube. The XBox has outsold it since Christmas and hasn't looked back.

Xbox sold 1.5 million in first three months, but only 400,000-500,000 in the first quarter of this year. They also are having really slow overseas sells. The Gamecube has sold over 3 million consoles worldwide. The Xbox is not doing as well as you think. >>



I'm talking stateside - the GC has yet to outsell the XBox in any month this year. Europe/Asia is a different story like you stated

 

[ksfhhllp]

Wow... everyone's a market analyst now.

Sony is planning to release a successor to the PS2 in 2005... check CNN.

 

[CKDragon]

Well, nothing on X-Box or PS2 interests me because the only decent genre that isn't done better on the computer is sports games... no original game concepts. The only console I plan on buying after these price drops is the GameCube just due to the multiplayer games.

Playing single player on a console is so 1998.

CK

 

[Shagger]

Not to turn this into ANOTHER Xbox vs. PS2 thread but...

The Xbox is not a bad system by any measure... I can remember the game selection on my PS2 6 months after launch. It seems as though the only PS2 game I though was any good was Midnight Club. *SHUDDER*. Looking back, Fantavision was pretty good, but it wasn't worth the $40 asking price.

I bought one of the Amazon bundles and it came with Madden 2001 and SSX which were BOTH kick butt titles... The other title that it came with was Ridge Racer V - 2 out of 3 ain't bad I guess...

 

[Wei]

damn, i gotta say, i'm a PS2 guy, but the xbox for 200 is very tempting. eventhough i know i won't be using it if i buy it.... must resist the temptation!!!

but if ps2 is going to be 200 bux, i might be brave enough to put a mod chip in my ps2. i wanted to put a mod chip in but the places that do it charges you like 80 for it. The mod chip is only like 5 bux and all they had to do is solder some wires. what a rip off, so i wanted to do it myself but was too afraid to break the ps2.

 

[Octunar99]

Since the price change has been psuedo announced by the Big Media I dont think I will get get busted for devulging this little tidbit, the Xbox should be going under some internal re-tooling and tighter board integration to reduce production costs. I doubt they will be loosing anymore money per unit on the box. When this "redesign" will happen I can not say but the price change announcment caught me offguard as I thought it would not happen till later in the year. Don't be too disapointed if they don't anounce it just yet.

As far as quality, I just got a Wide Screen 50" 16x9 HDTV and the XboX looks great!! DOA3 in 4 person tagteam simply rocks!!

 

[christoph83]

This sounds like a typical Microsoft move, their answer to everything. That's how they killed Netscape, just giving IE away for free and gaining all the market share. Luckily, game quality is a much bigger factor than console price in the console wars, so even if they gave away the xbox for free, I doubt they would put any other console out of business (at least I hope not). Incidentally, this is why everyone is suing Microsoft, for some pretty ruthless sales practices.

So cutting prices is wrong when a product isnt selling as well as its sopposed to? This is a normal business practice. If its not selling at a certian price you drop it lower to create more demand. How exactly is this ruthless. Sounds like you just have a grudge against Microsoft for some unknown reason.

About Microsoft losing money on the xbox.... If they are infact losing money I dont think Microsoft is worrying that much. Microsoft is in this for the long term. They are trying to create a name for themselves in the console business just like Sony and Nintendo. And if losing money on the xbox is needed to do that, then they will do it. Microsoft is thinking long term, create a good name and grab a good market share with the first xbox then xbox2 and xbox3 will be an easier sale.

 

[IshmaelLeaver]

Looks like GC is the real victim, it is a poor third to PS2 and Xbox, and Xbox has the built in HD, ethernet and plays DVD movies great.

there goes dimwit, trolling again.

I'm talking stateside - the GC has yet to outsell the XBox in any month this year

A Sony exec just said that GameCube (not XBox) took a bite out of their market share this past quarter.

Sales, schmales. Even being a fairly distant second in market share to Sony, Nintendo makes more off the video game market than Sony and MS combined. PROFIT is what makes a company survive. (Making most of the best video games in history helps, too).

Dis GCN all you want, they own the fall lineup.

$200 for XBox is a helluva deal, though.

 

[billw]

<< sometime in the year 2021... >>




War was begining......

What Happen??!!


sorry, couldn't resist

 

[wiredspider]

To those people saying that Microsoft will lose money on this, they won't...
When Xbox first came out, at the $300 price they were losing, but I believe this was mainly due to inital cost of setting it up, development cost, and advertising. Now they are probably making money off the actual console, and they can lower the price to $200 to either make a little profit or just break even. The real money comes from the games. It cost them less then $1 to manufacture and with other cost like advertising, it probably still wouldn't cost them more then $10 per game. The prices for the games are way more then $10, so they make a large profit off of those. (I can't say everything in this was true data fact, but I think this is the "gist" of it)

 

[IshmaelLeaver]

MS is probably still losing money on XBox, even at $300. Look at that hardware it has, and add advertising (MS had a MASSIVE ad budget for XBox), manufacturing, packaging costs... No matter what quantities you buy, the hardware alone is more than $200.

As far as them making a killing on software, yes, that's how it works. You have it wrong though. MS makes a licensing/royalty fee on all non-1st party games. Even with 1st-party games, it's not straight-up $10 cost and $40 profit. It's still a decent margin but not even close to that.

 

[godwheel]

<< If anything is going the way of the Dreamcast, it's the Gamecube. The XBox has outsold it since Christmas and hasn't looked back. >>



It probably should look back since the GC has overtaken the XBOX in US sales the past month selling well over 10,000 more units a week. The winner is the consumer. I might pick up an XBOX if they have any really good games coming out that I wont be able to get anywhere else. For now my gaming dollars are reserved for Eternal Darkness, Turok, Mario, Star Fox, Metroid, Zelda, Die Hard, Mario Tennis etc.

God it is a good time to be a gamer.

 

[xdcbox]

xbox is doing so bad in japan that the psone is outselling it, and wonderswan, a handheld system in Japan is outselling the xbox, but there is hope for the box, wait a few months for the neox (modchip) to be released and ppl will start buying it..

 

[Mysterie]

Everyone says Microsoft probably loses money to R&D. But I assumed other companies spent the effort to get the games up and running and they pay MS fees or MS pays fees for using the games (ie Sega with their games)? Or they buy out companies that spent the time and effort to make a game after the game is almost done and sell it as theirs .

Anyhow, I upgraded only two years ago to a Dreamcast from a Nintendo (yes the first one, not the 64). I love playing Ecco and watching the graphics. But as a lousy gamer I don't see the need to upgrade . Sheez things are getting more complicated as time passes. I wish for the good old days where the midi tones and Mario jumping up hitting a brick was considered state of the art, but that would mean giving up all my other gadgets (iPaq, LCD, Tivo, etc).

 

[Desturel]

<< I bought one of the Amazon bundles and it came with Madden 2001 and SSX which were BOTH kick butt titles... The other title that it came with was Ridge Racer V - 2 out of 3 ain't bad I guess... >>

Well, what do you know. Xbox has SSX and Madden as well. Plus it has Project Gotham Racing with is much better than RRV was (by a few light years)... soooo what you are saying is that Xbox is better at it's launch than PS2 was at it's launch. What a surprise!

BTW, Dreamcast had better launch games than both of those systems and look where that got Sega. So for all of the people saying it's all about games, you don't know what you are talking about. If it was all about games, then Dreamcast would still be around. It's about hype and market image. The good games on PS2? GTA 3 released a year after console launch. ICO released 8 months after console launch. FFX released a year after console launch. MGS2 released a year after console launch. GT3 released a year after console launch. None of these games were around to kill the Dreamcast. People who played into the hype of Bouncer (CRAP), Zone of Enders (CRAP), and Oni (okay, but bad controls) is what killed the DC.

Now the same people who played into the PS2's hype call the Xbox crap. I notice a certain amount of hypocrisy in that statement. At least people chosing the Game Cube can make the excuse that they want Nintendo exclusives.

 

[gsethi]

hmm.......

XBox = $199 - $40 (using coupon $40 off $200) = $160 ?
PS2 = $199 - $40 (using coupon $40 off $200) = $160 ?
Gamecube = $149 - $30 (using coupon $30 off $150) = $120 ?

Staples usually have these coupons......I wonder if staples carries any of these ? Also what other stores have coupons ? Wish DELL Carried XBox..........(then we could stack up coupons and eventually get it for ~$100 )

 

[Easygoing]

I think all of game companies will be out of business soon. They have all made a major mistake in not consulting with this group first.

 

[dragonlord2112]

<< hmm.......

XBox = $199 - $40 (using coupon $40 off $200) = $160 ?
PS2 = $199 - $40 (using coupon $40 off $200) = $160 ?
Gamecube = $149 - $30 (using coupon $30 off $150) = $120 ?

Staples usually have these coupons......I wonder if staples carries any of these ? Also what other stores have coupons ? Wish DELL Carried XBox..........(then we could stack up coupons and eventually get it for ~$100 ) >>



WHAT? Do you live in a cave? Staples generally sells office products and computer stuff. I'd love to get my hands on whatever you were smokin'...

 

[mithrandir2001]

$199 for PS2 sounds appealing. I probably would have bought one had they dropped the price a few months ago. But now that it's basically summer, they'll have to wait for my money because I'm not wasting time in front of the boob tube during the warm weather.