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greenmedic88 on 24 March 2010
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JaggedSac said:
greenmedic88 said:

You're starting to use convoluted logic here. The Xbox HDD doesn't actually do anything but store data. It's just a hard drive. Installing it in a plastic shell so it can plug into an Xbox does not increase its value.

The only reason for the shell design was to allow MS to package it as a proprietary peripheral and charge the most consumers were willing to pay for it.

And it absolutely is expensive relative to what HDD space goes for today.

 

$199 Xbox 360: emulates Xbox games.

$129 Xbox 250GB HDD: stores data.

The bolded is the main reason why it costs that much.  Wouldn't make much sense for them to have a SKU at $300 when you could make the equivalent for cheaper by buying an Arcade and a HDD.  So they are looking at a cost of $100 at least.

Premium priced HDDs recover losses on the entry priced $199 SKUs. That's not really any secret. MS would like nothing more than to sell an HDD SKU to every Xbox consumer, but there are a lot of consumers who won't pay more than $199 for a video game console.

If they only charged a slight premium over the cost of a bare OEM drive (packaging, plus the $5-10 housing), MS would have to lower the prices on all their HDD bundle SKUs.