[Edwood]

http://www.xbox.com/en-US/xbox360/xbox360console.htm

Microsoft sees a 6 month advantage and decides to gouge early adopters.

And the sheer stupidity is having two SKU's. One WITH and one WITHOUT a Hard Drive.

What are they thinking? So basically either little to no developers will utilize the HDD, or there will be stablility issues and performance unequality like we see with PC games.

What is the point now? Gee, I guess they could release a game that immediately supports the non HDD version, and then release a patch to support the HDD versions later.

No thanks, M$. I think I'll wait til next year's E3 and see what Sony does.

XBox will probably sell reasonably well in the USA, but they will definitely lose the Japanese market (they had a pretty weak foothold there anyways.).

Oh, and check out the prices for the first party controllers. $50 for a WIRED controller?! And with M$'s licensing and royalty payment policy for third party hardware developers, they really want to keep the prices high.

-Ed

 

[wakeride74]

Geez... talk about going backwards! Either you pay $400 for what you should get anyway or $299 for something stripped w/out the ability to even save game progress??? The stripped version should include the hard drive at bare minimum!
I agree What???
Although I am on the Xbox band wagon I'm not ordering this. I'll wait and see what it does and how much it changes after release.

I've also heard something about a possible increase on game prices, can anyone confrim this??

 

[EyeAmEye]

Glad I turned my back on the gaming world roughly a year ago and haven't looked back. Getting way to expensive for my tastes, and the games don't seem nearly as enjoying as they used to.

 

[450]

Have they annouced if they will have HD-DVD or not?

 

[widds2v]

There was an article a week or two ago saying they would put out a HD-DVD version next year. It'll probably release around the same price as PS3 (or $399?) and they'll drop the prices of these current-gen x360 (price gouging early sales). I had also read that games were gonna be upto $59.99 since the console was going to be so cheap ($299), if they keep the $399 version hopefully games wont stay at 60 bucks. I could see Sony charging 60, just for the fact they're blue-ray, but M$ is using regular dvd9 disks.

They're really not hurting themselves, people will still buy it in droves, and the "real" game will begin when PS3 launches and they can drop the price down to compete. If theres no competition why not squeeze all the $$ you can?

 

[Firam]

I am a Xbox fan but this is stupid. I mean $99.99 for a 20 Gig hard drive and $39.99 for a 64 Mb memory unit? They must start it high to try to cash in on the stupid kids. I will wait and see what happens with the PS3 like Edwood and widds2v.

 

[Blitzula]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Firam I am a Xbox fan but this is stupid. I mean $99.99 for a 20 Gig hard drive and $39.99 for a 64 Mb memory unit? They must start it high to try to cash in on the stupid kids.

They lost a lot of money on the hardware last generation with the lower pricing. It's really not unjustifiable pricing, although the two tier idea might be a bad idea.

 

[dSquared]

Only $399! All I need is another $50 for a second controller, oh, and another $99 for wireless adaptor, and lesse, that's ~$550. . . what am I forgetting? oh yeah, a game! That's it!

Only $610 + tax! woo hoo!

Nowaitaminute! I need to upgrade to Xbox live gold to play this game online...

[/sarcasm]

'course they still don't have a confirmed launch line up. I'll try making bambi eyes at various relatives (am a little old for that, but I might still have it), or at least wait until Halo 3 comes out...

 

[Welly Wu]

Quote:

Originally Posted by EyeAmEye Glad I turned my back on the gaming world roughly a year ago and haven't looked back. Getting way to expensive for my tastes, and the games don't seem nearly as enjoying as they used to.

Ditto. Get a copy of the August 2005 edition of The Economist - it's interesting.

 

[Kirosia]

Damn . . . I was hoping to maybe get an xbox or ps3 one day . . but the costs are just too freakin high. Eh, I'll do what I always do, wait til the system gets real cheap and then rent the games. For now, the ps2 and gamecube will do. (neither of which belong to me) Hell, may even get an xbox if the price hits real low.

 

[AuroraProject]

I'm confused, is the $299 version Live! enabled? How can you receive system updates and such without a hard drive? Also notice how it says "The Hard Drive also lets you play original Xbox® games". So they limited the backwards compatibility. The silver and gold Live! packages are somewhat confusing as well, what happens to my existing Live! account?

$399 is steep, but I'll still have one on launch day.

 

[Homeless]

i'll probably get the high end editon, but not untill a price drop...

 

[MikeB06]

The premium version of the Xbox360 does not only have the benefit of the 20gig hard-drive, it also comes with a wireless controller (as opposed to the wired controller that comes with the $299 core version), a headset, component HD AV cables, and a remote controller (for a limited time). Just wanted to point that out since it seems some would get the idea from this thread that the hard drive is the only benefit of the premium $399 version. It offers a much higher value than the core $299 version.

But either way, its crazy expensive, and the new Legend of Zelda- The Twilight Princess is coming out for the Gamecube in November. So, I'll be picking up that instead of dropping upwards of $500 for a Xbox360 set-up. Plus, if any Nintendo DS owners are around, Mario Kart with free wireless online play is coming in November, so there's some good alternatives for Nintendo fans. I don't want to derail the thread in favor of Nintendo talk, just wanted to show all the other stuff that comes with the $399 Xbox360 version.

 

[Squeek]

For me there is no alternative. I sold my xbox, ps2 and GC just in time for summer fully expecting to get the 360 on launch.

If I am unsatisfied with it when the ps3 drops, I'll sell the 360, absorb the loss and grab the ps2.

I saw this coming a mile away. The cash they are losing on hardware is ALWAYS absorbed by the early adopter and through the sale of peripherals.

I'll be getting the souped up version, an extra wireless remote and 2 games. Then I'll be hunting those of you down that have a Live account and proceed to whipping your arses in Perfect Dark Zero!!!!

 

[AuroraProject]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Squeek Then I'll be hunting those of you down that have a Live account and proceed to whipping your arses in Perfect Dark Zero!!!!

Hah, you think so huh? My gamertag is the same as my username, send me an invite and I'll give you a whoopin!