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PlayStation (Games) XBox (Games) Entertainment Games

Microsoft Officially Slashes Japan Xbox Price 45

Posted by simoniker from the dreaming-of-parity dept.
securitas writes "Reuters' Daisuke Wakabayashi reports that Microsoft will 'cut the price of its Xbox game console by a third in Japan, undercutting rival Sony Corp's recently reduced PlayStation 2 price ahead of the holiday shopping season.' The price cut takes effect on Nov. 20 when it will be reduced to 16,800 yen (US$155) from 24,800 yen (US$228). The cut comes a week after Sony's 20 percent cut in its PS2 price to 19,800 yen (US$182), which takes effect Nov. 13. (Gamespot brief) Does this hint at a holiday price cut for North America, too?" We mentioned price cut rumors for Xbox in Japan a couple of weeks back.
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Microsoft Officially Slashes Japan Xbox Price More

Microsoft Officially Slashes Japan Xbox Price

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  • MS is nervous (Score:2, Insightful)

    by scumbucket ( 680352 )
    Nintendo is turning up the heat with it's GC price cutting.....
    • If MS is worried about Nintendo, they have their heads farther up a dark cavity than I thought. Nintendo fills a niche market, and fills it quite well. The only company MS is battling for console supremacy is Sony, and they've been getting their asses handed to them.

      The only way they're going to make a real gain (even if it's shortlived) is a decent sized price cut compared to the PS2.

      • Re:MS is nervous (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Matrix272 ( 581458 ) on Tuesday November 11, 2003 @12:06PM (#7444521)
        The only company MS is battling for console supremacy is Sony, and they've been getting their asses handed to them.

        If you think the point of the Xbox was to become the dominant console on the planet, you're far more naive than I would have guessed. Microsoft isn't stupid, they know that the PS2 outnumbers the XBox by the tens of millions. The point of the XBox was to show that Microsoft COULD make a worth-while console, and to gain momentum. The XBox 2 won't even try to dominate the market... but it'll make more in-roads for Microsoft. I'd guess the XBox 3 MIGHT start really giving Sony a run for their money.

        The XBox is already pretty obviously the most powerful console in the world, but it doesn't have the great games... because it doesn't have the great developers yet. The XBox sent a message to the developers that Microsoft was a very real force in the video game industry. The XBox 2 will send an even greater message, being that the public supports it. Around the time the XBox 2 reaches its 2nd or 3rd birthday, you'll see a massive influx of developers making XBox games. When the XBox 3 is released, Microsoft will clearly have enough developers to make Sony nervous.

        The XBox was never going to take over the world... not even close. That was never the point anyway... Just watch out for the XBox 2 or 3.

        • Re:MS is nervous (Score:5, Insightful)

          by Acidic_Diarrhea ( 641390 ) on Tuesday November 11, 2003 @12:17PM (#7444645) Homepage Journal
          The market strategy you are describing is indeed Microsoft's strategy but it's also important to note that no console manufacturer has ever used this model before. Mainly because no company has been willing to operate at a loss the likes of which Microsoft is currently seeing. When Sony jumped into the market with the PSOne, they didn't have a long term plan to slowly take market share away from Nintendo and Sega - they aimed to corner the market for that generation and move on from there. I think that you're overstating the future for the XBox - it certainly could go down the way you describe but it's not as likely as it seems you believe.

          I don't think Microsoft is going to be a company that gets a devoted following (like Nintendo) since they have not really been a great first person game developer (outside of the third party companies that they've bought) so they're not going to have a guaranteed base they can work from.

          And my final point is that you didn't hear all this talk of Microsoft planning not to win this generation of hardware with the XBox until after the XBox had lost. There was a program on G4TV regarding the making of the XBox and at the time of the launch, Bill and company seemed quite excited about the prospects. It's easy to say now that MS had planned all along that they wouldn't be able to win but I am sure there was quite a bit of disappointment in the sales department. The first console generation Sony entered, Sony won.

          • Mainly because no company has been willing to operate at a loss the likes of which Microsoft is currently seeing

            I have been hearing this line of reasoning bandied about for some time now and I have two questions:

            1. Has anyone actually proven that Microsoft is taking a loss on each console sold? It seems to me that especially by now the hardware (P-III 733 Mhz, Nvidia Geforce graphics, cheap motherboard) is probably pretty inexpensive. Everyone takes this for granted but has it ever actually been proven
            • Naive? I'm naive? I haven't seen recent numbers from Microsoft in regards to the XBox but as of February of this year Microsoft was losing over 300 million [itworld.com] on the XBox. And if you had actually read my comment, I made the point that MS didn't take these losses "just because" they could but rather because they had simply been unable to get the market penetration they had expected. Read an interview or two with someone from the XBox division and they'll talk about how they didn't expect to win this generation
            • Read the MSFT SEC fillings. Those 50-100 million USD per month loses in their XBox & related products division have to come from somewhere.

          • Re:MS is nervous (Score:2, Interesting)

            by PainKilleR-CE ( 597083 )
            When Sony jumped into the market with the PSOne, they didn't have a long term plan to slowly take market share away from Nintendo and Sega - they aimed to corner the market for that generation and move on from there. I think that you're overstating the future for the XBox - it certainly could go down the way you describe but it's not as likely as it seems you believe.

            There's a difference between the market Sony came into and the market Microsoft came into, though. Sony saw a market that wasn't being reach
          • I don't think Microsoft is going to be a company that gets a devoted following...

            Then how do you explain the roving masses of clerics that append MCSE to their names?
          • they have not really been a great first person game developer

            I wouldn't say that. Obviously Halo actually came from Bungie, but Microsoft has been putting out some quality titles for their machine. Midtown Madness 3, MechAssault, Crimson Skies, Rallisport Challenge, Project Gotham Racing 1/2, Top Spin, Amped 2, Links 2004 coming soon... All of these titles are a lot of fun and have good balance between fun and depth.

            Obviously there's a common theme, all of these games involve vehicles or sports. Microsof
        • XBox was Microsoft's experiment to see how much of the living room they could potentially grab. They have the resources to pour into loser consoles for another generation with the larger goal of making something similar to the PSX (the PS2 with integrated Tivo functionality, etc). Frankly, I think the PSX is being made to simply prove that Microsoft is going to be behind in that space as well, considering it's price is a bit high for the consumer space.
        • I didn't say the XBox was battling the PS2, I said MS was battling Sony, and nowhere did I say MS expected to win this round. MS's success will still be measured in many ways against Sony, and as I pointed out, Nintendo isn't part of the equation.
          • You're either ignorant or western-centric.

            MS is not a viable competitor right now in Japan (you know, that country that the article is about) and probably NEVER will be. In Japan the two big guys are Sony and Nintendo with MS trailing a quite far distant third. The X-Box tanked there, think Turbo Graphics 16 tanked, think Atari Jaguar tanked. This means MS will not be any measurable part of the equation when it comes to imported titles. So it will remain in the gun game/fps/sports game niche it current
        • If there's anyone X-Box is in direct competition with, it's Gamecube. They tend to have roughly similar numbers across the various regions. Sony is beating the snot out of both of them, though.

          Wish they weren't though... don't like many PS2 games. :(

      • Re:MS is nervous (Score:2, Informative)

        by rwven ( 663186 )
        that "niche" is outselling microsoft AND sony right now. I think your information is deeply flawed...
        • Short term gains don't outweigh the longterm fact that Nintendo isn't competing with Sony and MS. They do what they do, and they do it well, but the massive price cut and its resulting sales certainly don't mean it's the king of the mountain.
          • It's not that Nintendo is king of the mountain.

            It's that this isn't Sony vs MS with Nintendo a niche player. It's Sony kicking everyone's asses, with MS and Nintendo fighting for leftovers. And MS is losing at the moment.

            They may not be targeting a similar market to Nintendo, but they can't ignore it because the markets still have a lot of overlap.
      • If MS is worried about Nintendo, they have their heads farther up a dark cavity than I thought. Nintendo fills a niche market, and fills it quite well. The only company MS is battling for console supremacy is Sony, and they've been getting their asses handed to them.

        The only way they're going to make a real gain (even if it's shortlived) is a decent sized price cut compared to the PS2

        Right now, the X-Box is getting it's ass handed to it by Nintendo as well. They're going to end up third everywhere but t

  • whatever happened to the redesigned xbox? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by *weasel ( 174362 ) on Tuesday November 11, 2003 @11:53AM (#7444406)
    the smaller, lighter, cheaper one that's been rumored?

    if MS is going to beat Sony's ps3 to market with their xbox next, they're running short on their window to release a refresher product.

    particularly with their less-than-dominant market share, one wouldn't expect it to be worth the investment to redesign the thing if it's only going to be on sale a few months ahead of the xb2.

    i'm thinking that the redesign is the only hope for further US price cuts.
    • > they're running short on their window

      Very funny.

    • if MS is going to beat Sony's ps3 to market with their xbox next, they're running short on their window to release a refresher product.

      The PSOne redesign was only released about a year before the PS2, I don't see why we'd expect redesigns of current-generation products before the end of 2004 given that the next-generation consoles are expected in the 2005/2006 timeframe. Afterall, the redesigns are usually about taking advantage of the consolidation of the various parts in the system (something that the X
      • if sony plans on a holiday 05 launch, and MS plans to beat them to market (as has been claimed) MS has to be ready at least for an 05 launch. which means the redesign, ideally, should be up for a christmas 04 launch.

        but the absurdly low price of the GC has changed the landscape a bit.

        currently the xbox is the number 2 system (at least in the minds of developers) - but if the GC continues to sell red-hot at firesale prices, that may all change before christmas 04. You may see developer support shifting b
        • Even if we see developer support shift to the GC, there is a 1-2 year lead in on games development. Any gains in that area aren't going to be realized until just around the time of the next console generation.

          So, this holiday season will probably determine who finishes at number 2 at the end of this generation.
        • currently the xbox is the number 2 system (at least in the minds of developers) - but if the GC continues to sell red-hot at firesale prices, that may all change before christmas 04. You may see developer support shifting back toward the GC.

          Right, except that, with the exception of the cheap, fast ports that most GC owners don't seem to buy, this probably won't effect the games coming out for the Cube itself, but rather for it's successor, especially if developers expect the next consoles to start hitting
          • regardless of image and reality being what they are, if MS doesn't drop prices a wee bit for this holiday season (i kinda figured 3rd week of november too, maybe leak the price drop a few days before thanksgiving, feed the frenzy) then they may well not have the installed base at the end of 04 for xboxnext to matter. it'd likely be released and struggle without 3rd party support like the dreamcast.

            although, sony also has its pvr/satellite/ps2 box releasing soon in japan. one would wonder if MS has an answ

  • Er --- isn't $155 less than the cost of the HD? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Snafoo ( 38566 ) on Tuesday November 11, 2003 @01:07PM (#7445296) Homepage
    How big is the hard drive in the X-Box? How much do hard drives of that size run for these days?

    • How big is the hard drive in the X-Box? How much do hard drives of that size run for these days?

      This is what is killing the XBOX. Manufacturers have a finite amount of space on their factories, and not one of them is willing to make a 8 gig hard-drive for Microsoft's XBOX when they could be making 120 gig hard-drives for DELL - UNLESSS Microsoft is willing to pay roughly the same price as a 120 gig drive.

      If drives were sold by the Gig then the XBOX drive should cost $8 - (WD and Maxtor both sell a 250 Gi
      • They should also be at about the point where they run into similar problems getting their chips made(CPU/FPU).
      • The same thing goes with the other parts in the XBox.

        Is Intel going to keep making 733MHz CPUs for anything less than a premium? Of course not, they probably aren't producing anything under 1GHz any more. Plus, if I remember correctly, there were some differences between the XBox CPU and a standard CPU, though not major, which would also increase the costs. The slowest Intel CPU you can buy at any given time is usually not much less expensive than the slowest current-generation CPU available.

        Do you think
        • The same thing goes with the other parts in the XBox.

          And through all this, Sony will probably devise a single-chip version of the PS2 and everyone will buy the DVD player that happens to have a PS2 inside rather than buy the PS2 that happens to play DVDs.

          Why not even release a PDA based on a shrunk-down PS2 core? They've already got Linux on it.

          • And through all this, Sony will probably devise a single-chip version of the PS2 and everyone will buy the DVD player that happens to have a PS2 inside rather than buy the PS2 that happens to play DVDs.

            As it stands they've already got the 2 primary chips down to 1 chip, and they announced in the last couple of months that they're starting production of that chip on a smaller fabrication (90 nanometer iirc). This would probably lead to use in the PS3 for backwards compatibility, though they'd have to maint

            • Who knows, maybe it's a heat issue, or they simply feel that their existing line of PDAs is going in the right direction.

              While the Clie PDAs are certainly nice, it would be a mildly entertaining to see Sony come out with a PS2-based PDA Cell Phone to succeed where the N-Gage couldn't.

      • I thought I read somewhere on the Linux for Xbox sites that new Xboxs are running with larger HDDs in them just only the front 8Gb is actually used. I imagine you could do the same thing with a processor, just underclock it.
    • How is this insightful? Who modded this garbage up?

      The HDs in the XBox are a meager 8GB... Actually, they're larger than that since no one actually makes 8GB drives anymore, but only the first 8GB are used. In any case a hard drive that size costs nowhere near $155. Pricewatch lists a 25GB 5400rpm Western Digital for $35 shipped.

      For $155 you should be able to get about 180 or 200GB of space.
  • There was a thread [slickdeals.net] on SlickDeals' Forums, linking to a scan [charter.net] of an upcoming post-Thanksgiving special at Wal-Mart. $80 USD for GameCube, Zelda game and a game carrying case... oh how the temptation rises!
  • I think that if Japan gets a price cut then we should to. I own a PS2, and so far Sony has a much wider selection of games than Nintendo or Microsoft platforms. They are going to have to change that before they will ever be able to beat Sony's PS3. I don't know what the new PS3 will be capable of but, I hope that it comes with a hard drive already built in, and the ability to play music cd's WITH the visual effects like the X-Box and the PS1.

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