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The Almighty Buck XBox (Games) Entertainment Games

Microsoft to Cut XBox Price to $149? 80

Posted by CowboyNeal from the craaazy-savings dept.
BjB writes "According to a Dow Jones Newswire article, Microsoft plans on lowering the price of the XBox to $149 (from $179) at the beginning of April. This is to compete with the PlayStation 2, which currently remains at $179."
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Microsoft to Cut XBox Price to $149? More

Microsoft to Cut XBox Price to $149?

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  • Good (Score:1, Funny)

    by Mr.Dippy ( 613292 )
    Nintendo should follow MS's lead and drop the game cube to 70 bucks. That would be gangsta tight.

  • Wow (Score:5, Interesting)

    by ll1234 ( 167894 ) * on Friday March 19, 2004 @10:53AM (#8610296) Homepage
    As the article mentions, Sony is going to have their hand forced by Microsoft's move and the PS2 will drop to the same price point by E3.

    Which means in a few months anyone will be able to stroll into their local store and buy all three major consoles for the same price ($400 give or take a few dollars) as the Current Hotness Video Card (ATI 9800XT).

  • Prepping for Nextbox (Score:5, Interesting)

    by bigman2003 ( 671309 ) on Friday March 19, 2004 @10:54AM (#8610310) Homepage
    Supposedly the specs for the Nextbox come out next week. I'm very, very interested in seeing what they will be doing with that. I hope that they don't get onto a 'low-price' kick, and skimp on the specs to come in with a $199 console at release. I really don't mind paying the extra $100.

    Are we now in the 'golden age' of software for the current crop of consoles? Is this the time where the number of users has reached critical mass, allowing developers to pour more dollars into games, knowing that there is a huge base of customers? But- just before they start holding back on development of new games for the current generation, waiting for the next one?

    I'd like to think that we'll at least have a good bunch of games up to this next Christmas. After that we can sit around and wait for the next generation.
  • To drop the price of the PS2 down to $149. I also forsee Sony dropping the price of their network-enabled console bundle to $179, or just dropping the non-bundle completely.

    Honestly, my PS2 is starting to die. I've been thinking about getting another one when it finally kicks the bucket, or try to repair it atleast. Enough to use it as a Linux box.

    That does beg the question, though: what's on the horizon in terms of PS2 games, when we may very well have the PlayStation 3 this christmas?

  • In Britain... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by real_smiff ( 611054 ) on Friday March 19, 2004 @10:59AM (#8610375)
    that should make it 80 quid, which would compete with the Gamecube here (normally ~75). fat chance though, things never seem to even come close to what the exchange rate [xe.com] says they "should" be. Anyway I'd still take the 'Cube, even if they were the same price.. i thought the x-box might make me a nice media-player but by the time it does reach that price it'll probably be underpowered for mpeg4 :/ oh well.
    • I think it'll be underpowered for MPEG5 or 6 or whatever we get next, but it does just dandy for MPEG4. I watch fullscreen divx and xvid movies all the time (in avi, mkv, and ogm packages) with Xbox Media Player and it is very solid. I'm playing them over the network, too, using the XBMSP protocol and ccxstream, because I never have managed to get SMB to work. :)

    • Re:In Britain... (Score:2, Informative)

      by Doug Dante ( 22218 )
      "things never seem to even come close to what the exchange rate says they "should" be"

      That's because your government adds on a 17.5% VAT (Value Added Tax) that is hidden from you. In the USA we have no VAT, but we do have a visible sales tax of up to 10% (usually about 6%) depending on where you live. In Canada, they have both a VAT and sales tax.

      Personally, I think that the taxes should be plainly visible so that we citizens can understand them better, but that's probably the reason that they're invisi
      • In Canada the sales tax varies by province, from ~7% up to ~15%, and it's never hidden. It's also dependant on products: in some provinces there is no sales tax on groceries, but there is sales tax on prepared foods you buy at the same store.
  • I hope this makes the ps2 drop to $149. Microsoft will never win me over :p

  • Looks like they're following as anticipated (Score:5, Insightful)

    by hambonewilkins ( 739531 ) on Friday March 19, 2004 @11:29AM (#8610759)
    I believe it was expected earlier that MS would shift the Xbox to $150, then $130 (in the summer) and finally $100 on the eve of Xbox 2 (Nextbox, whatever).

    At $150 this is certainly tempting and I'm pretty torn.

    Sony will likely drop to $150 as well, but what about gamecube? How low can that go? Likely not much lower. It is more likely that Nintendo will bundle things with the cube at the $99 price, perhaps games or controllers or even the wavebird.

  • I'm not too surprised by this news. Given the fact that the PS2 is very old, the Xbox (still) isn't making a dent in the PS2's market share and the Gamecube already near dirt cheap price; lets just say a price drop to $149 was long awaited.

  • total market penetration (Score:4, Insightful)

    by chrish ( 4714 ) on Friday March 19, 2004 @11:40AM (#8610929) Homepage
    If the XBox gets down to around $100 each, Bill Gates could buy every single man, woman, and child in the US one, and he'd still be worth about $25 billion (assuming he'd pay retail).

    XBox would instantly have total market penetration, and then some.

  • That's great news (Score:5, Insightful)

    by superpulpsicle ( 533373 ) on Friday March 19, 2004 @11:42AM (#8610944)
    I may not be a Xbox fan, but price slashing helps everybody win. Sony would be stupid to maintain the $179 mark.

    Now if only game prices drop.

  • $50 to go! (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Dark Paladin ( 116525 ) * <jhummel&johnhummel,net> on Friday March 19, 2004 @12:26PM (#8611532) Homepage
    I've already got an Xbox, which actually is a good time: there's actually some games that I enjoy for it now (Ninja Gaiden, finally got my copy of Steel Battalion, and the complete Morrowind).

    But I'm still waiting for it to hit $99 until it's cheap enough for me to buy a second one. Why? Modding, folks. I keep eyeing the idea of turning an Xbox into a little media server to store my DVD collection in DivX or Xvid and keep my plastic disks out of the hand of my children's greasy little fingers.

    "Daddy - Blue's Clues won't play!"

    "Stop touching the DVD after you lick your fingers!"

    To be honest, turning it into a little emulator as well doesn't hurt my feelings either to keep my NES/SNES games pretty (especially as I think the Nintendo is about to die).

    I've wondered how often people buy the Xbox not for games but for modding the system for these purposes anyway. I have no interesting in pirating, but being able to watch a fansubbed anime on my TV and now through a Mplayer window would be nice.
    • Why buy a second one? Just mod the one you have. Be careful to install a mod-chip that can be turned off for when you log-in to Live and you're set.

  • Walmart Ad (Score:3, Interesting)

    by cdneng2 ( 695646 ) on Friday March 19, 2004 @12:27PM (#8611555)

    Over at vgtalk.com, the rumour had been circulating around since March 15. There is a scanned Walmart ad [vgtalk.com] showing the price.

  • I thought, if this price change happens soon enough, I could buy one now at the current price at a place that does 30-day price match guarantees and then get the credit for the difference later.

    Then I thought again, and realized that they'll probably change the game bundling for the new price point and so the store won't price-match because it isn't the exact same product.

    At least if I wait for the day of the sale, I'll know immediately if I can price-match or not when Wal*mart rapidly runs out of stock.

  • Fool me once, shame on me (Score:3, Informative)

    by M3wThr33 ( 310489 ) on Friday March 19, 2004 @01:38PM (#8612574) Homepage
    Why are we to believe a scanned Wal-Mart ad for the Xbox price drop when the one for Target and the $99 PS2 one never came true?

  • Frick!!! (Score:2, Funny)

    by BrainsVolpe ( 636343 )
    I just on Yahoo! that one deal may be X-box and Halo for $170. I just bought a X-box and Halo YESTERDAY for $215 after tax. I'm pretty freakin' pissed right now.
    • So what? Just return it. And if you've already opened the packages, wait until the new price goes into effect, buy the items, and return them using your original receipt for the higher price. That's why places like Circuit City have the 30 day price guarantee, it's just saving you the trouble of going through with purchasing the item again and saves them the trouble of having to process it.

  • Not enough in my book... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Metroid72 ( 654017 ) on Friday March 19, 2004 @04:22PM (#8614748)
    MS should bring it down to $99.
  • That could seriously get rid of the competition...

    Yet anti-M$ zealots would continue to denounce it and refuse to get one.

  • after the price drop, it'll be more expensive (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 19, 2004 @07:09PM (#8616743)
    At Xmas (and maybe now?) one could buy the Xbox for $179 at it came with 3 games...

    You can now buy an Xbox for $150 with 0 games?

    Nintendo had the Cube at $150 with a free game and it didn't really sell great. Get rid of the free $50 game, and drop the price $50 and violia, sales out the wazoo...

    I just don't get it...

    • While the price may be the same between $150 for cube and bundled game versus $100 for the cube and $50 for a game off the shelf, the value isn't the same. The bundle is only as good of a value as the seperate pieces if I want the game that *Nintendo* picked. Otherwise it's $150 for the bundle and $50 for the game I really wanted.

      Plus, there is the smaller market for people getting a second cube. (Which I'm pondering myself, to avoid the just home from work/just home from school conflict between my son and

  • Well, a price drop on the Xbox and PS2 was expected this summer, with the speculated price being $129. Instead, we get one in April, at $149. Don't get me wrong, I like saving $30, but...it's $30! The time for a $149 price has supposedly come and gone, and I'd agree. It's just not that big of a price break - I'd rather they dropped the price in June or so to $129.

    Of course, the real question remains is if Sony drops the price around E3 - if the PS2 falls to $129, you can bet that the Xbox would follow.
  • Now all the publishers stock will go up :)
  • Analysts also predict sales of Xbox to decline dramatically until the beginning of April.

    They're so smart...
  • In the Xbox, MS has subsidised a standard architecture which has sold well and has been opened up to run Debian by the Xbox-Linux team. Elsewhere, Sourceforge is hosting the Open XDK Project, which aims to provide an Open Source, Free, Legal Xbox Development Kit to facilitate hobbyist and homebrew coding.

    It is now fairly common practice to illegally chip an Xbox to run pirated games. Given the previous experiences with the Sega Dreamcast (the commercial value of game development falling off once the hardwa

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