Can the Arcade possibly fall below $200?

[amirnetz]

mrstickball said:
The Arcade will ALWAYS be supported. Even if it can't use Netflix. After all, a owner merely has to buy an HDD to get Netflix/NXE to work.

For the record, Microsoft has a massive price advantage over Sony and Nintendo with the Arcade:

As Peter Moore stated, post-MS, the Xbox was a boondoggle for 2 reasons:

1) The GPU was an off-the-shelf product that never saw major cost decreases
2) The HDD always cost them a pretty penny, regardless of size.

One of the issues of running a system with an HDD is that it automatically adds $30-40 in costs to produce your system...Regardless of how big or small it is. It's a very fixed cost.

The Arcade will ALWAYS allow Microsoft to maintain that lower price point due to no HDD. Why would you add something that is going to cost what could be 30-40% of the entire cost of your system, as a mandatory item - when in reality it's entirely optional?

Nintendo is also very cautious with adding an HDD - much to users' dismay. Why would it be that the most profitable company this generation...Would hold back on something that many gamers see as a must-have? Maybe they know something that Sony doesn't: The HDD adds unnecessary cost to a system - Microsoft would rather have a 2 tiered system: Maintain a price advantage with the Arcade versus the Wii, and maintain a performance advantage versus the Wii with the Premium.

If Microsoft axed the Arcade, it would be, by far, the worst financial decision. It would be very unlikely that the X360 will drop below a $179.99 price in it's lifespan with an HDD SKU. However, without the HDD, I think we could see the Arcade hit $129.99 or even $99.99 before this generation is done, and will allow MS to have a very longtail, PS2-esque lifespan, since the system will be affordable, and have a great games library.

Next year, we'll see the X360 Slim debut. I honestly wouldn't be surprised if Microsoft hacked another $20 off the price, and put the Slim Arcade at $179.99 to counter a possible Sony PS3 drop to $300-$350 in mid-09.

And again, no HDD will allow the X360 to have a massive gap in price between the HDD-equipped Playstation 3, and the HDD-less Arcade. There will always be a ~$100 difference between the systems....And that could be a huge advantage as Microsoft seeks to deflate whatever air Sony has left in their tires.

I agree with everything you said except for [again]: "Even if it can't use Netflix. After all, a owner merely has to buy an HDD to get Netflix/NXE to work."

For the record for the 5th time: You don't need an HDD to run netflix/NXE. The 256MB memory card is sufficient for that. For netflix specifically you need only 8MB (Mega bytes, not Giga bytes) to run Netflix.