Showdown: is the Xbox 360 price cut desperation or boldness?

[xman]

Impulsivity said:
I think Microsoft realizes that outside a small community (gamerboys with bad computers who love FPS games) which gets them to 25-30 million worldwide and no further, very few people like their console. They don't have the rabid built in fans of Nintendo or Sony built up over years of successful beloved consoles, they don't have the great first party games with the sole exception of Halo (meaning all the other games go to the PC or other consoles...hell even Halo does).

They don't have the cool brand name especially with the Vista thing. Microsoft is thought of by most of the public negatively and especially not as cool in any sense of the word. John hodgemen is the perfect representation of Microsoft in the eyes of most (the PC from the Mac PC commercials) the bumbling guy who just can't quite figure out what is cool or desired by the public. It's funny that they think an eyetoy clone and a singstar rip off is going to get them into the Wii demographic. Compared with genuinely interesting ideas like Little Big Planet its yet another example of MS being out of touch.

This move is boldly desperate. They are doing it, and taking big losses again, to try and force Sony out which almost certainly won't work. They don't really have games, they don't have the fan base and they don't have the image so they're going to try and buy the generation with loss leading hardware pricing. That WILL work, but only until the 30 million point the Xbox got near, after that they're not going to head into every household like the PS2 or PS1 did, they're not going to appeal to the mass market like the Wii, they're just rushing towards their relatively low gamerboy saturation point after which they have nowhere to expand.

I have several friends I would consider casual who have either bought or been looking to buy a console lately (many of them women) and the only two choices were the PS3 and the Wii in their minds. The 360 isn't even in the public consciousness outside of the community that bought the Xbox 1. The PS3 and Wii are still in the top 10 on Amazon while the 360 barely can make it onto the first page at number 25.

I agree with some of this but MS taking big losses is simply not true they will still be making money on the Pro and Elite and breaking even on the Arcade.  You are right they did it cause Sony can not match them.

 

I have several friends in North America and I hear a lot of WII, PS3 and Xbox 360