Yup, 360 Elite Goes $299 On August 30

By Luke Plunkett, 5:40 PM on Fri Aug 21 2009, 13,685 views (Edit, to draft, Slurp)

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And so it begins. This is a page from the latest Wal-Mart catalogue, due August 30, advertising the Xbox 360 Elite at $299, a whole $100 cheaper than its current price.

With Meijer's catalogue also advertising a $299 Elite for August 30, let's end the conjecture right here. This is definitely happening.

What's fascinating is not the fact the Elite is $100 cheaper, it's that we now - finally - have the 360 and PS3 going toe-to-toe in the marketplace. Both consoles are $299, both have 120GB HDDs, both have HDMI, both are...black.

Be interesting to see what impact each console's bullet-point deal-breaker - Blu-Ray for PS3, Netflix for 360 - has on sales.

both consoles aren;t $299

more than 50% of Xbox 360 sales were on the $199 option

What's you point?

this thread is about the MS Price Drop...that People on this site think is fake...

http://www.vgchartz.com/forum/thread.php?id=83567

About the Netflix. My DSL speed is under 1 gb, how would that affect Netflix playback? Would they play like most videos on xbl where they play for about third seconds then pause for thirty seconds and then play for thirty seconds and buffer for another thirty seconds repeating for the duration of the video ? I don't like taking eight hours or more to watch a 2 hour movie.

@zizzla

no your OP says they are toe to toe in the marketplace

when they are not......

so whats your point?

Is it really accurate to call the new $299.99 "Elite" model a price drop? The fact of the matter is that the 360 isn't any cheaper than it was two months ago. $199.99 and $299.99 (and Microsoft's Euro/Pound/Yen conversions) are still the two opening prices with which to purchase a 360. All that's changed is that there simply isn't an option to pay $100 more for 60 more GBs, an HDMI cable and a black finish.

Speaking of which, now that the Elite console doesn't offer an HDMI cable, can it really be considered an Elite? The truth is that all the current Elite is is essentially a black pro with 60 more GBs.

No matter how you look at it, Microsoft's move of "price-cutting" the Elite to $299 isn't any different than when they exchanged the 20GB Pros for 60GB models last year or when Sony turned the 40GBs into 80GBs. It's not price cutting. What it is is adding value which has never led to a noticable increase in hardware sales so far this generation and won't begin to now.

If Microsoft wants to avoid completely getting dominated by Sony and Nintendo in the similar or even worse way than Sony was dominated by Microsoft and Nintendo last year, they're going to have to actually drop the price of at least one of their two models.

You need A new connecting...or stop lying...On My Xbox 360...If I download a video...i can't paly it till it's finished downloading..and it's saved to my HDD...I have never seen this buffering your talking about...and Netflix is it's own application...so your connetion would be the only problem...

My OP is a copy paste from Kotaku...What are you two going on about......?

And further more..Sony just said that they are now  going "Head to Head" with MS....So what's your point?

I don't know what your talking about....MS is MS and Sony is Sony...they do it their way and that's it....I can't stress how unaffected by this Price drop I am...I have an Xbox 360 already...after this holiday is over...then we can talk about sales and dominating....

     I'm not lying.  There are videos on xbox live that don't download but that buffer.  Like the strategize videos and a lot of the trixie and major don videos.

    Also, I can't get a new connection where I live.  I don't have $50.00 a month for 1 gig transfer.