ssj12 said: Is M$ trying to put themselves back in the red?

First thing I thought, while this is good news for consumers and Xbox fanboys egos and it'll ensure MS is in 2nd until at the very least late 2010, it'll also ensure they are back in the red for at least 1 more FY.

 

starcraft said: Aj_habfan said: Wow. Make or break time for the 360. How do you figure that? Its selling well every week.

I think what he means is, specifically to Europe/Others, is if this is just short term like last time, then Europe is over for them.

Squilliam said: leo-j said: ssj12 said: Is M$ trying to put themselves back in the red?   They have been in the red ever since last quarter, when they mysteriously lost money despite being profitable on software, XBL, and hardware(cough FF XIII cough)   Anyhow, I believe they dont care , they said it before, they are willing to do anything to take out the playstation brand.     They aren't doing everything to take out the playstation brand. They haven't bought EA/Take 2 yet have they?

They would if they could, but the Entertainment division is the bleeding child of MS, they don't get all the love that other subsidiaries do, if they got the greenlight to 50 billion dollars like their core division did to buy Yahoo, they would've bought T2, EA, Capcom, Sega, SE, Koei, Tecmo, Bethesda, Activision, Ubisoft and whatever else they could.

starcraft said: Aj_habfan said: Wow. Make or break time for the 360. How do you figure that? Its selling well every week.

YoY perhaps, but coming in third every week in Europe isn't well by my standards. I don't mean "make or break" as in the 360 will crash and burn, all I mean is that even after this price drop the 360 is still in third, it will remain in third for the rest of this gen.

 

For all those who are wondering about how Microsoft can afford such cuts.

Isuppli lists the cost of a 20gb Xbox 360 @ 320 and the price of the Arcade was ~$280.

November 2006 so thats the Zephyr model I believe.

Note1: The cost of the motherboard is very steep.

This is the cost total cost for a fresh mainboard with everything attached.

Cost scaling since then silicon components:

GDDR3: Unlike the PS3 - the Xbox 360 uses commodity memory, so the costs for this have likely halved in the last two years. GDDR3 is used extensively. The 8 512 mbit chips are still being used in mass production for desktop GPUs.

CPU: Die size has halved. 50% smaller = 50% cheaper if you take into account heat sink cost reductions offsetting the fact that the testing/packaging costs do not scale and assuming a similar yield which is reasonable.

GPU: Costs would have more than halved assuming the same scaling. They are integrating into one chips where there was once two. So the reduction in testing/packaging/manufacturing/heatsink costs are quite significant. Also it removes an important point of failure so the reliability/suport costs would be far lower.

Motherboard: The power supply components on these motherboards are expensive. A typical desktop motherboard has to supply only a CPU as GPUs come with their own power regulation circuitry. An Xbox 360 motherboard is much more complicated than your standard motherboard as it contains the ram/gpu/cpu all on the same board- these changes reduce that complexity.

Cost scalings.

If everything else remains the same except the motherboard costs are halved then according to the above table the Xbox 360 Arcade would cost $180 to manufacture and the 60gb would cost $230 to manufacture. The power supply is probably $5-10 cheaper but I didn't bother to include it.

The base model would likely cost ~180 and the Premium model would likely cost ~230 to manufacture.

How the fuck can they afford to do that... I forgot, they're Microsoft.

fayewong said: can you buy a external hardrive for the arcade version? The arcade version has no hardrive......... the heck? whats the point about buying it if you can't save things onto there but via memory card, isn't this last gen stuff?

 

 You have over 100 posts and don`t know that MS is selling HDDs for a big profit? Sure you can add a Hdd to the Arcade,but only a MS hdd. And the memory card is great for saves and XBL Arcade games... 1 game will fit,but you can delete it and download it again so that you can get another one. That is wat i like about Live,you don`t lose content,you just download it again. 

 

 

UK retail chain Woolworths looks poised to cut the price of Xbox 360, following a similar move by Microsoft in the US.

The Arcade Xbox 360 will drop to GBP 129.99, the Premium unit to GBP 169.99, and the Elite console to 229.99, according to scans from the upcoming Woolworts catalogue, photographed by Engadget.

The three Xbox 360 consoles currently sell for GBP 159.99, GBP 199.99 and GBP 259.99 respectively. In comparison, a Wii console retails for GBP 179.99 with a copy of Wii Sports.

However, it is not yet clear whether this is a Woolworths-lead or Microsoft-bossed initiative.

The recent Xbox 360 price-cut to USD 199 in the US caused sales spikes of between 100 and 600 per cent.

Both Microsoft and Woolworths have been contacted for comment.

 

==> just wait and see.

Squilliam said: It looks like they were deadly serious when they said they were going to take 2nd place world wide and these pricecuts are a testament to that. Also it looks like the price-cuts in Woolworths were just a movement in the official prices.

Yes at last you understand...

Microsoft is not going to give up...why do you think their Windows OS in the PC are so famous after all these years??

They have also announced 12 new exclusive games for the Xbox360 coming in 2009 and some new gadgets for their console that are keeping them secret for the time being

Vasot said: Squilliam said: It looks like they were deadly serious when they said they were going to take 2nd place world wide and these pricecuts are a testament to that. Also it looks like the price-cuts in Woolworths were just a movement in the official prices. Yes at last you understand... Microsoft is not going to give up...why do you think their Windows OS in the PC are so famous after all these years?? They have also announced 12 new exclusive games for the Xbox360 coming in 2009 and some new gadgets for their console that are keeping them secret for the time being

Im considered one of the biggest Xbox 'fans' on the site. So aren't you preaching to the converted?

 

I don't see why this will have that much of an effect to be honest.

In Europe the Xbox 360 has been available cheaper than the Wii (€199 vs €250) for most of the year now and about half the price of a PS3 (€199-239 vs €399-449 dependent on model) for the same time.

If those price differences won't allow them to massively outsell their competition, I don't see how a modest 20-30 euro price cut on top of the already quite low prices will suddenly make a huge difference.

its will be a hard time for sony.