Xbox 360 to drop $100 by Christmas?
More rumors, more joy! After the Chromehounds demo I reported on earlier today another story is about to run rampant on the internet now, claiming that the Xbox 360 will get a pricedrop of up to $100 this Christmas to battle the PS3.
As News4Gamers, the rumor mill in question, claims:
A source close to Microsoft says consumers can expect a price drop of almost $100. […] The source also revealed according to Britxbox.co.uk that the Xbox 360 hardware team are now busy redesigning the chips supplied by ATI and IBM to cut costs and allow a price drop to coincide with the release of Sony’s Playstation 3.
Checking out the site he mentioned, we find more or less the same text, further claiming without any trustworthy source “that the Xbox 360 hardware team are busy redesigning the chips supplied by ATI and IBM to cut costs and allow a price drop to coincide with the release of Sony’s Playstation 3.”
To me, the story sounds like bullshit. The 360 is already 2/3 of the PS3 price and they’re still losing money on it very probably. That chip engineers are working on making the chips more effective and cheaper to manufacture is a dead giveaway obviously, and they’ll continue doing that until the end of the 360’s lifecycle just to make profit per unit better. But despite that there is no obvious economic reason to drop the price by such a large amount, I’d expect much more to see it drop $25-50 just to make the point about being a damn lot cheaper than the new Paystation.
Anyway, I did contact Microsoft to check their official response. Totally unexpectedly I got a very firm and honest one too. It read “we do not comment on rumors and speculation.” Well mmmkay didn’t expect that one did we. So, choose for yourself whether to believe all this or no. I don’t for sure.
This rumor has been talked about it before, I remember someone saying, I believe Major Nelson stating on his blogcast that the 360 will not drop it’s price.
It doesn’t sound too farfetched, but like most people are thinking, it probably will not happen.
If a price drop does happen it won’t occur until after Halo3 has shipped.
i hope it does drop a lot cuz then my friend could buy one and we’ll all have 360’s
The idea was that after they manage to make the chips cheaper, and run cooler so the xbox360 will make less noise than an old pc, they can sell it for 299 and 399 while losing less money on it.
If they lower the price, then the effect of lowering money-loss on the console is gone.
Also, i am wondering how they are going to excuse for not selling 10 million xboxes by november. Short supply? Nah, nobody will buy that as most european countries have had xbox360 in stock for weeks/months now.
I think the best way is if they say that they are saving xboxes for christmas, and that they will sell 10 milion xboxes after christmas.
Does anyone know how much they have sold now?
3 million? 4 million?
Somewhere around 5 million by end of June by aggregating official numbers from NPD and extrapolating recent sales figures.
do you have a source / link for this information you just gave?
Or does it, like the article classify as “rumor” also?
just kidding, but i am interested.
This should also mean that between december en now more than 7 milion PS2’s have bee sold, which i disapprove of
Ofcourse I do: click
That’s NPD’s official information, so from an independent agency. It says Xbox 360 has sold 3.2 million units by 03/31/06, and that the subsequent months saw 250-300k sales in the US per month. Considering the “rest of the world” market is slightly larger than the US one it is safe to assume monthly sales are 600k units. It is now 3 months after March 31st, so 3.2 million plus 1.8 million makes 5 million a realistic assumption.
All the figures are public and official.
First off, the Xbox 360 is a deal at the current price in my opinion. Any price drop would hopefully spur more potential buyers to bite and that can only help to create more software. However, I say take this, like all rumors with a grain of salt. Besides, most of us reading this already have a 360 and paid the full premium (if not more - Hint, Hint, Ebay people).
Why not just stick to reporting actual news instead of internet rumour?
Why not try stopping moaning about nothing?
I’m serious. So far I think Xboxic has been really good for getting accurate news about the 360. If the site starts to report any old unfounded nonsense like a lot of other sites do it’s credibility will go out the window. Rumour sites are everywhere. Genuine sites with genuine news and reports are few and far between.
Yeah, this is posted under “rumors.”
No where does it say it’s 100% true, read what Curry wrote, he thinks it’s 95% bullshit.
It’s a news site, gamespot/IGN do the same.
I totally agree with you.
It’s a rumor, nd listed appropriately, and I think it’s an idea that’s worth kicking around. It’s not our fault that people take rumors and get their hopes up only to get let down, that their fault. Take it for what it is. The same people would be bitching when a rumor ended up being true, and Xboxic DID NOT run the story… You can’t win with some whiney bitchy people
So where the #%$@ is SF2,HF….
Never mind that, where is the free poker?
Because if you don’t hear it from us you’ll hear it elsewhere, and I rather honestly let you know I think it’s bullshit than give you the impression we miss half the news that’s going around by not posting it
It’s on the internet, a lot of sites are reporting it, so it’s news. Our responsibility is to let you know what’s going on in the world of Xbox and this rumor is one of them. I don’t file it as a rumor for nothing and I posted Microsoft’s response.
The 360 will be a year old in november, why not drop the price a little since it is into 1/5th of its life cycle (5 year life cycle)? it only has four good years ahead, and M$ is going to make cash hand over fist when Halo 3 comes out. Add in the PS3 and Wii competition, and this rumor makes perfect sense to me. people would clear the shelfs for a 360 with a $100 instant rebate.
I’m assuming price will stay but we’ll be seeing some value packs appear this Xmas. So 360 Premium with Kameo and PGR3 for $400 or so.
Keep dreaming.
I think it is a bad idea. I’d drop it $50 for the premium, and drop the price of the add on HD, for the Core down to $50.
$100 is too big a loss on hardware for MS per unit. $25 to $50 would be more like it. I’m all for price drops, I just want MS to succeed this round. They don’t have to drop 100 bucks.
If MS would start to include a memory unit with the Core System, they would satisy the needs of the casual gamer. And at $299, you can’t beat that. It’s a great start, and you can add-on until you have everything you want if you like. At least the 360 (unlike the PS3) is the same core system in both packages.
there was a list of things that were rumored to be shown or talked about during and after e3 and a price drop of 100 by christmas was rumored. Id like to see some sort of price drop so more of my friends get 360s.
i think peter moore stated there wont be a price drop this year. he said they are far under their main competitor price wise, and come on, its microsoft. they arent gonna drop the price unless they do so without loseing money. they will have more units and more games and a lower price on the shelf this christmas then the ps3. the only reason for doing this would be if they are scared for some reason, or the 360 sells continue to plummet like they did in may. if sells dont pick back up by then i suppose they might. id be pissed though redesign the console fast. handhelds i can take, but consoles shouldnt get redesigned for at least 3 years.
Peter Moore also said that “Enough is enough” when it comes to Backwards Compatibility. You can’t take a rumor, and say it’s 100% false, when the only argument comes from a guy who has alraedy gone back on his word more than once.
I had a thought today. It’s a rare occurrence, but this one put into my head the idea of the Wii launching for $149. I think a $449 Wii60 combo ($149 + $299) could pwn the PS3.
For massive damage to weak point, et cetera.
there are some strong, strong rumours floating the wii is going to be 199. i would think 199 is perfect. they probably could do 149, but if ur competitors are priced so high, u dont want to run the risk of looking toooo inferior. but the ps3 gives u what u pay for. in three years that next gen dvd game is going to have much richer texture and sound files on it, possibly a larger file then a whole dvd could hold, for the music at least.
let me say i meant next gen blu ray disk. and actually square has gone on record saying they couldnt do ff 13 on a dvd. its going to be the equivalent of 3 dvds in size. so if u like final fantasy, its worth it. imo
Japanese devvers should learn to use the bloody game engine instead of filming 200 hours of expensive crap FMV for every game. FMV was a nice invention in the 90’s when it actually improved games. These days no European or American developer dares use FMV anymore because it’s so incredibly space inefficient compared to simply using the engine.
10 hours of FMV = 2 DVD’s. 10 hours of engine cutscenes = 50Mb at best plus max 600Mb of MP3 for the sound.
Not being able to fit a huge game on a DVD is the hallmark of a crap developer. The fact that DOA4 is the only 360 game so far to actually fill the whole DVD9 is a sign on the wall for this.
Agreeing with Curry here, but Japanese developers are learning. Take Lost Planet for instance - FMV quality, in real-time. That’s amazing to me.
Doubt it will happend maybe in japan but not here.