I'm late to the party, and I don't have many facts, but wasn't it regular price with a $100 gift card added? They did that with all Blu-ray players (including PS3), a while back.

The deal was alright, but it wasn't actually 100 bucks off.

First and formost, you actually have to pay taxes. On Amazon you don't. Taxes in the amount of...300 dollars. 200 for the 360, and 100 for whatever you buy with the gift card. Secondly, you have to spend the giftcard and Walmart.

Also, it'll cost you gas money to get to walmart, and time, compared to amazon.

Still a great deal. Kinda like 60 or 70 bucks off a 360, but you actually have to leave the house to get it.

....meh.

this was a pre-black friday deal. i expect there will be more and better deals for all 5 current gen consoles on black friday and leading up to christmas.

so no, it didnt kill christmas 360 sales.

I told my friend about this deal today. He didn't budge at all. He still wants a Modern Warfare 2 360. This week will be interesting...

Yes Kylie it is an impulse purchase, you don't have to like it but it is what it is.

^^
I'm not so sure. A great offer on a digital camera or an mp3 player or whichever else relatively affordable "neutral" item, where each brand and model offers the same base functions and lets enjoy the same media may push impulse purchases. But a console requires some thought before buying, as not all the games are multiplatform, there are other issues too, like input devices, and, for more informed buyers, issues about post sale policies, like free or pay online, additional features, free or proprietary add-ons, etc. When I bought my digital cam, I chose simply the most affordable, but from a well known brand, that had equal or greater resolution than my minimum requirement, that used standard SD cards, not memory sticks, that had optical zoom and comfortable controls: the week I had time to look around , the best offer for my tastes was a Kodak, in the previous and successive weeks they were other brands. So now I have a Kodak. But if I want a Wii, I'll wait a great offer on it, I won't buy another console because I saw a great offer on it.
Owners of more than one console, like you, are a very small minority outside of sites like this, don't take for granted that common people will buy each good priced console they see, otherwise the world would be full of GameCubes.

Don't confuse the impulse to buy a candybar for your screaming kid with the impulse to purchase a game console. I agree there is thought to the purchase although not as much as you detailed above, the average consumer sees the ad and decides that is a product I'm going to purchase, that is the impulse. Yes the consumer thinks about certain issues, but the purpose of the price is to negate some of the thinking.

^^
I know it very often works, but the lower you must pay, the best it works, in this case people had to pay $199 anyway and they got $299 value. This is a good offer, but the price barrier is still quite high, so most people won't pay $199 for impulse, most of them were just waiting for the best offer they could get, but they wanted a PS 360 before too.

yeah but then they get to the check out counter and they think "hmm I could really go for 100 candy bars right now".. that's where the giftcard comes in, dummy. It's an impulse buy to make an impulse buy more impulsive.

EDIT: which then increases the total impulsiveness of the 360 purchase

Metroid Trilogy FTW!