Yesterday, we gave you a heads up on the recent price drop on all things Xbox 360. The 120 gb HDD is now reduced 30 bucks to $149.99. Its still a little steep, especially for that amount of memory, but you are limited to what you can do for memory on the 360. You can drop in a 200 gb HDD SATA drive in a PS3 no problem, but it seems MS designed the 360 to avoid that scenario.
The off and on again price drop for the Xbox 360 is now fo’ real real. You can buy an Xbox 360 for under 200 bucks and thats a great thing. Too bad you can’t download or save anything of consequence. The “normal” 360 will sell for $299.99 and the Elite for $399.99. I really don’t see what all the hubbub is about. With the Arcade model, you still need to shell out another hundred bucks for a hard drive. By my math, that gives you a regular Xbox 360. Include some usuable storage space then call me with the big news.
Microsoft announced today a $50 price cut on the 20GB Premium Xbox 360 SKU. This is “while supplies last” so they can clear out the retail channel for the newly announced 60GB Premium Xbox 360 which will sell for the $349 price point. The Arcade and Elite SKU’s will not be receiving a price cut.
“We know consumers need more and more space to store the amazing digital content Xbox 360 offers, and we’re giving it to them at no extra charge,” said Albert Penello, Xbox director of product management at Microsoft. “No one device offers the depth and breadth of entertainment that Xbox 360 can deliver, and now you’ll have three times the storage to manage all that great content.”
I guess they didn’t want to get a quote from Aaron Greenberg on this one? What surprises me about this move is that it comes one day before Microsoft’s press conference for E3. What do they have in store if announcing the 60GB console had to get bumped?
There have been rumblings that the PS3 will have a price drop to coincide with the very leaked price cut that the Xbox 360 will be announcing officially in the next few days. It turns out that Sony will not be dropping their price on the PS3 at all. Chief Financial Officer Nobuyuki Oneda said:
Our strategy is not to sell more quantity for PS3 but to concentrate on profitability,” Oneda told investors at a Nomura Asia Equity forum in Singapore. Our plan is not to reduce the price.
So what does this mean? Sony believes that they are going to give us better quality games on a better quality system. No one can doubt that the PS3 has a step on the Xbox 360 tech wise, but the games is not so clear. You can expect great games on both consoles and you better believe with the pockets MS has, they can surely secure the talent to make those games. Or, this could be complete bullshit. We shall see.
As we draw closer to E3, the price drop rumors are everywhere. The word on the street is that there will be a discontinuing of the 20GB Xbox 360 and it will be replaced by a 60GB model. A 20GB HDD is becoming useless with all the movements to DLC, Movies, Songs, etc.
“At E3 Microsoft will make an official announcement that we are dropping the 20GB pro console to $299… As we launch the 60GB SKU throughout July, the 20GB SKU will DISCONTINUE. You will see the new SKU on your 7/1 price list,”
I wonder if they will sell a 60GB standalone HDD. My original launch 20GB is basically full and I need to delete things to make room for demos. We have to assume the price will remain at $299.99 due to the price MS charges for storage.
If you look at the top left of the second page of this K-Mart ad, you can see that the Xbox 360 is listed at $299.99. Upon further inspection, this is the 20 gb model with HDMI and headset included. People have speculated that at E3. we will see a price drop. IGN asked MS about it, no comment. Yeah, no shit. PS3 price drop to follow? Maybe a price drop in the price of gas?
Our friends across the pond can pick up an Xbox 360 for even cheaper starting this Friday. The Arcade SKU (sans hard drive) is now cheaper than the Wii in Europe at €199.99/£159.99, which is sure to bring in a few sales.
The Premium SKU will now go for €269.99/£199.99 while the Elite will run you €369.99/£259.99.
Will this move help the Xbox 360 become the number 1 console in Europe? Right now it’s trailing both the Wii and PS3 in most countries, so we’ll see how this affects sales numbers.
The poor corpse of HD DVD isn’t even cold yet and we are already seeing price drops on hardware and now the movies. Looks like Amazon is having a half off sale on a good amount of their HD DVD selections. Not a bad time to pick up that copy of Transformers and a few others, unfortunately I didn’t see Heroes on sale. Be sure that even more of these types of sales will be springing up shortly so if you miss this one don’t sweat it.
Many people are expecting another console price drop and they may have inadvertently got it. As of right now, Best Buy no longer sells the 80gb version of the Sony PS3; it has been pulled off of their website. This may not come as a surprise, because Japan only sells one version of the console as well. Taking away the 80gb model would only leave the 40gb which does not have backwards compatibility on it. MS has since stopped updating their BC list because they did not think it was worth the effort. It seems that the only way to get a bigger HDD on your PS3 than 40gb is to buy one and install it yourself. More on this to come.
I know, I know, this is all speculation, but newsworthy nonetheless. Rumor, a big rumor, has it that MS plans another price drop to happen right when GTA4 comes out hopefully sometime in March. Reports say that an unnamed source from the company revealed that a price drop is imminent to lure the hardcore Sony fans who have not gone next gen yet over to MS. Expect an update from this very soon as a statement from MS on this is imminent.
[Via Bitbag]
