Why You Don't Want a $99 Xbox 360 530
itwbennett writes "Peter Smith has done the math on Microsoft's $99 Xbox 360 — 4GB model (no hard drive) and a Kinect sensor. Here's why it's a bad deal: 'You'll be paying $99 + $359.76 in monthly fees, or $458.76 over the course of two years. Compare that with (I'm using prices from Amazon that were accurate as of May 7th, 2012) $287.70 for an Xbox 360 4GB + Kinect bundle, and two 12-month Xbox Live Gold cards at $48.41 each, a total of $384.52. So you're paying almost $75 for the privilege of laying out small cash now.' And then there's the not insignificant matter of early termination fees."
Re:Slow news day? (Score:5, Interesting)
Two small corrections:
1) If you take walmart prices instead of amazon (more representative as it's store-vs-store) it's actually a $50 savings.
2) it works out to 6.25% apr (yes it'd be 12.5 over two years but the annual interest rate is the proper comparison to credit cards/other financing)
Checkpoint starvation (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Same reason as before... (Score:5, Interesting)
Because poor people need an xbox NOW, and can't wait a couple of months, right?
This isn't food, of a roof over their heads, it a video game console!
Which actually is something the poor need far more than the rich.
Seriously, I earn a decent living. As a result, I like to spend my weekends skydiving, and my vacations renting a house for a week at the mountains. I remember when I didn't have any money (relatively speaking, I know there are truly poor people out there who don't have a roof over their heads), and spending time glued to my TV playing video games was a reasonably cheap form of entertainment.
Entertainment is a human necessity. Food and a roof over your head keeps you physically healthy, entertainment keeps you mentally healthy.
Re:Same reason as before... (Score:3, Interesting)
Even someone flipping burgers can afford quality living when they're utilizing their funds wisely.
Minimum Wage: $7.25/hour. At 40 hours a week (doubtful, all minimum wage factories like McDonalds only hire people part-time to get around regulations requiring them to offer benefits, which, depending on the state, could be someone working up to 35 hours a week or less, 5 whole hours short of a full 40 hour week) that is $290 a week before taxes and shit come out. Figuring 25% is gone right off the top, you're down to $217.50 a week, or $870 a month.
You show me the "quality living" you can find for less than $1000 a month. There's a reason why so many minimum wage earners are still on government assistance even despite having a job.
Don't get me wrong, I am completely in agreement as far as budgeting goes, but people that make such a piss-poor wage are still being subsidized by tax dollars, which is why poverty is so bad in places where Walmart and McDonalds are the main employer in town. These corporations get the benefit of a cheap labor force and likely still collect government money for hiring minorities, thus bringing the amount they're really paying down even further. I used to work overnight at Target years ago, and it was common knowledge that the state was giving Target half of the hourly wage in the form of grants in exchange for hiring a bunch of Serbians that came here under refugee status back in the late 90's. These people were given homes, had taxes annulled, owned their own businesses (that changed hands every so often to avoid taxes) and even drove BMW's and shit to work for their $10 an hour. Which is exactly why Target always gave them preferential treatment when it comes to hiring....unofficially, of course. It was surely just a coincidence that there were 9 of them hired to every single non-Serbian.
Re:Same reason as before... (Score:5, Interesting)
Because poor people need an xbox NOW, and can't wait a couple of months, right?
This isn't food, of a roof over their heads, it a video game console!
Which actually is something the poor need far more than the rich.
Seriously, I earn a decent living. As a result, I like to spend my weekends skydiving, and my vacations renting a house for a week at the mountains. I remember when I didn't have any money (relatively speaking, I know there are truly poor people out there who don't have a roof over their heads), and spending time glued to my TV playing video games was a reasonably cheap form of entertainment.
Entertainment is a human necessity. Food and a roof over your head keeps you physically healthy, entertainment keeps you mentally healthy.
The Amish seem to be doing just fine.
Re:Same reason as before... (Score:3, Interesting)
I think of those consoles as a dongle that lets you play the games. It's not like you don't know that you've got restrictions.
Besides, I got tired of buying a new video card every year just to keep up with the latest titles. I know for a fact that any console game will run on the console.
Re:Or... (Score:2, Interesting)
The PS3 option is only 249.00. You can add a motion detection kit if you wish, or the personal view stereo vision package. PSN is free to use. Sounds like Xbox users are getting hozed no matter what option they take to me.
Oh, and my PS3 is a first generation. Has never had a RROD, never broken, played BlueRay and DVDs without issues. So yeah, Xbox users really get bent over by Microsoft, all for the cool factor of saying they have one.
ps. Before you slam Sony for root kits, I'd suggest you read the history [wikipedia.org]. It's not related to a PlayStation at all, and is old and apologized for.