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badgenome on 05 September 2008
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DMeisterJ said:
badgenome said:
DMeisterJ said:
badgenome said:

I can't tell if you're being ironic or not, but I do believe it was planned. I seem to remember at least a few people suggesting this is how it would go down, too. The 20 GB pricing clearance price seemed to fit, but that was only $20 more than a $279 Arcade. So $199/$299/$399 makes sense.

I guess every time a company slashes prices, it's screwing over customers. What illogic.

 

No, every time a company launches a system at a price, then price drops weeks later it is screwing over customers.  It's complete and utter BS that it was planned.  And yes, the pro was priced close to the Arcade, but what you have to understand was that was supposed to be a limited time.  So those who rushed out to buy a 300 dollar 20 gig pro, thinking they got a deal, are screwed out of forty extra gigs of space by what?  Six weeks.  And those that bought a 350 60 gig pro are screwed out of fifty bucks for a price drop on an item they bought six weeks ago.

Unless M$ planned on screwing it's customers over, it was desperation.

So how were they supposed to price things in the interim? $279 Arcade/$299 20 GB/$299 60 GB?

I guess when $ony (lulz) drops prices after denying it in the run up, they're screwing the customer. Except they're not, because those people have decided the PS3 was worth the buying price. If the price drops soon thereafter, they might feel unlucky but they shouldn't feel ripped off.

And if you don't think it was planned, I don't know how to convince you. But if you read their statements over the past year, you'll see a lot of stuff about $200 being the magic number. This has practically been telegraphed to anybody who's been paying attention.

200 being the magic number doesn't mean anything.  They can say it all the time, but that doesn't mean a price drop is on the horizon.

And like someone else said, what should have been done was scale back shipments of the 20 gig until the 60 gig came out, so it could have been a smoother transition, much like Sony did with the phasing out of the sixty gig, and the introduction of the 40 gig.  And much like Sony just got done doing phasing out the 40 gig and releasing the 80 gig.  You see they didn't introduce the 80 gig for more money than the 40 gig, they just phased it out smoothly. 

That's how it should have been.  The lack of planning shows in that instead of phasing it out, they just dropped the price on it, then introduced something new, and price dropped that too.  And this is something that MS did fine last year, when they introduced the Arcade, and Phased out the Core.  They did it perfect last year, so it's weird that this year they didn't phase this out, which makes it seem less planned.

Except it did mean something, because they ended up cutting the price to $200.

I don't think that was coincidence. It's definitely targeted at the kind of person who would buy an Arcade... somebody who's more "casual" and doesn't care about Live. The so-called Madden Player, for instance.

And what you're saying doesn't quite make sense to me. They still launched the 60 GB without phasing out the 20 GB. That doesn't really have anything to do with whether or not this price cut was planned before or after Sony won handily in July despite the sale.