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XBox (Games) Businesses

360 Costs Half As Much As PS3 By 2006? 102

Posted by Zonk from the then-why-am-i-going-to-pay-through-the-nose? dept.
EGSonikku writes "According to Merrill Lynch, after doing a breakdown of hardware and manufacturing costs., the XBox 360 may end up as little as half the cost as Sony's PlayStation 3 by 2006. Citing Sony's financial woe's and Microsoft's deep pockets, they predict '...Microsoft's Xbox 360 should emerge as the early winner in the next round of the game console wars.'"
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360 Costs Half As Much As PS3 By 2006? More

360 Costs Half As Much As PS3 By 2006?

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  • Microsoft continues to follow the IE strategy I see...

    And, again, I don't understand why they're leaking this now. Who wants to pay $400 for an XBox 360 now when they can wait about 6 months and get it for half price?

    (Although I don't think it'll be half price that fast.. probably within 3 or 4 years as is the normal degradation... unless they get into a price war early on)

    • Re:Ahh... (Score:3, Insightful)

      by SilentChris ( 452960 )
      "Microsoft continues to follow the IE strategy I see..."

      Uh, yes. Since they're dumping the console for free.

      "And, again, I don't understand why they're leaking this now."

      They're not leaking it. This is an analyst's take.

      "Who wants to pay $400 for an XBox 360 now when they can wait about 6 months and get it for half price?"

      For the same reason people paid $350-400 for PS, PS2, N64, etc. when they came out. To be the first on their block.

      "(Although I don't think it'll be half price that fast.. probably with
    • Hey, if it's $200.00 in the first 6 months, I'm picking one up. If I pick up an XBOX 360, then I'll probably skip the PS3, since most of the important games usually come out for both.
      It makes business sense to me.

  • Predictable (Score:1, Flamebait)

    by mshiltonj ( 220311 )
    Microsoft claims another victim.

  • Citing Sony's financial woe's and Microsoft's deep pockets

    Wasn't that exactly how the last generation played out, and still PS2 stomped all over Xbox in almost every arena?

    • I'm not sure about Sony's financial woes 5 years ago, but I remember the XBox being more expensive to make then the PS2. So, unlike last time, Microsoft has the advantage of deep pockets, a cheaper product, and being first to market.

      Don't forget, Microsoft is known for its big mistakes but also for the fact that it learns from them. They learned a lot from the first XBox. Expect to see all new mistakes this time. ;) But never underestimate them...

    • *loudcoughXBOXLIVE,HALO* *coughs again*xbox included a hard drive* Graphics anyone?
  • Well it seems like the battle between Xbox and PS3 has been won by Xbox, though we can't determine for sure considering neither consoles are even released yet. But where does the Revolution come into play? Honestly I think it's going to be apart from the competition and have it's own sucesses. The revolution is so different from the 360 or PS3 that it may end up being very successful as well, but with a different part of the consumers. Then again, it could just as easily be the biggest mistake in console g
    • ....but with a different part of the consumers...

      I have to ask......which part would that be?
      • The part that people seem to think Nintendo is exclusively marketing. Casual gamers that will be more appealed by the novelty of controlling a game with their motions and gestures instead of with their thumbs.

        Though MS has said that they want tha same market, and I'm not so sure Nintendo isn't going after hardcore gamers here. I'm really intrigued by the possibilities this controller presents so waiting seems like the only smart thing we can do.
    • microsoft has such skills, they won the battle before it even started. either that, or you're f*cking miss cleo on your computer desk to know this.

  • Bleh. (Score:2, Insightful)

    by bk_veggie ( 807894 )
    Can we please have some news, as opposed to speculation? I own all three of the current gen systems. I was an early adopter (ouch) for all three, and each have had their ups and downs. I've had one PS2 and one XBox die on me. I try not to hold it against them. The fact of the matter is ITS ABOUT THE GODDAMN GAMES. If the PS3 came out in 2009 and cost 1200$, I might give it some serious thought if they had a (good) NaNa-OnSha game being released for it. If I knew there were remaking or making a new Steel

    • Re:Bleh. (Score:1, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      This report comes from Merrill Lynch. To ML, and its clients, it's not about the games but the profit. Sorry to burst your bubble, but I'm sure you'll still get karma points for being the first to remind us all that "it's about the games!"
  • ...will they have any good games by then? I love my Xbox, but I don't see anything particularly interesting coming out for the 360 at launch.
    • Just cause you don't SEE anything interesting, it doesn't mean there aren't good games coming out. Were people eagerly anticipating Halo before the xbox launched? People thought it was gonna suck because it was supposed to be made for the Mac, then Windows, then it was ported to the xbox.
      • Ermm... I'm pretty sure tons of people were eagerly awaiting Halo, and while disappointed by the platform changes, still were willing to play it at any cost. Halo helped sell the XBox more than anything. After playing Halo for the PC (it was so-so), I think it was the best move MS has made so far.
  • Now, that I hadn't noticed before. Very surprising.
  • Most people on /. are smart enough to see through what MS is doing here. I'm starting to think there should be a page just for all the 360 half duplicate articles. Or maybe just a review at the end of the day.

    The 360 could easily be 200 bucks by the PS3 release. Microsoft has no problem picking it's own pockets. And the only thing they're paying real money for is the chips. DVD and hard drives are cheap (yeah, I know this HDD is a small one, but you can get a 20 Gig of the same size for a whole lot les

    • It's funny that you say that most slashdotters are smart enough to see through MS's bullshit because it seems that they're not smart enough to see through Sony's.

      Why would somebody who cares about console gaming support the Playstation brand first? Kutaragi doesn't care about the console market/industry, and he's even gone out of his way to distinguish the brand as NOT a gaming brand. Even since the Playstation, it's never been a gaming machine. So MS is trying to take over the living room and so is Sony,
    • "The X-Box 360 kiosks I've seen are drawing mediocre attention."

      There's a PS3 'kiosk' (more of an E3 video on loop) in Yodobashi Akiba (big electronics store in Akihabara in Tokyo). It sits on one wall of a room full of Playstation 2 games. It shows MGS4 gameplay and cutscenes and it's absolutely stunning. You know what else though? Nobody pays it the slightest amount of attention. It's the Nintendo DS units running Nintendogs and the plasma TV on the wall showing a trailer for 'Shadow of the Collosus' that

  • Console Wars: The Story so Far (Score:4, Funny)

    by DingerX ( 847589 ) on Thursday November 03, 2005 @11:41AM (#13941777) Journal
    Sony: Wow -- neat hardware, big PS2 user base. Too bad crappy dev tools and byzantine Cell architecture by themselves generate several months of delays for developers. PS3 is gonna be on the front line of the war for the living room, so it's gonna be real pretty. Wait. You didn't think you actually owned any of your own content, did you? Hell, if you read the EULA carefully, you won't actually be owning the PS3 either!

    M$: Nicer dev tools, and a relatively vanilla design (insofar as 3 PPCs can be boring, it is). Too bad you have to pay a subscription fee to M$ to use it online. The 360 can't compete with Windows Media Center, so it won't be _that_ pretty -- or it'll cost extra to use it that way. Engineered shortage? What are they going to do when they don't have the sellout they made their retailers guarantee?
    Revolution: Cool controller. Y'all got a console that works with?

    The question isn't "Who's going to win this?" But rather, "Who's gonna buy any of these?"
    • Crappy dev tools? vi (or emacs) is all the dev tool you really need. :-)

      Sony likes Linux, they like GCC.. Which means that technically their boxes can be made to run anything

      I think they wanted to give the developers freedom to do things their own way, but developers didn't really want that as much as they thought they did.

      Oh well, scuttlebut says the PS3's dev tools are much improved over the PS2's. They should be, considering how easy it seems to port stuff to the PSP.
    • The question isn't "Who's going to win this?" But rather, "Who's gonna buy any of these?"

      Until I see a game I want, I won't buy it. I only bought the xbox when I saw a decent co-op game that didn't do that annoying split screen.

      It is the games that sell consoles....not the consoles.
  • Of course xbox 360 will be the early winner, it's coming out a year before PS3.

    • Re:The early winner? (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Phisbut ( 761268 )
      The report predicts that 2 million hardware units will be sold in 2005

      Will they even ship 2 million units in 2005? or does "a memory card" count as a "hardware unit" too?

  • Comment removed (Score:3, Insightful)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Thursday November 03, 2005 @11:59AM (#13941980)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • Why are you so concerned with who 'won'? We got three great systems this generation, and the only people who won were the gamers themselves.

      I used to be concered with such things (XBOX SUCKS LOL), but as soon as I realized that I played my Xbox more than my PS2 and Cube combined I realized that fanboyism really doesn't have any point at all. Do yourself a favor, and next time you see a blatant fanboy, mod him down, even if you agree with him.

  • They say the system is going to cost 340 at launch to make. and Sony's going to cost 495. So nice of them to forget production. Anyone remember the fact that there's people they pay to put these systems together, it's not just faceless magic that assembles these systems, in addition there's other costs.

    And Sony doesn't want to make a profit on the system, they need to make the profit on the game, every company knows this. Microsoft has opted for a lesser system in hopes to avoid going into an initial de

    • Re:Math isn't their strong point. (Score:1, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      The one thing that always surprises me when it comes to analyst speculation is how they always compare these companies as if the 'costs' of production are equal between these companies. Nintendo, Microsoft and Sony have completely different strategies in the manufacturing of hardware that benefits different companies in different ways. When you consider that the actual physical cost of producing a single unit is pretty small (compared to the purchace price) and that the majority of costs are technology and
      • Don't forget that Sony is using the PS3 to push Blu-ray. Sony Pictures has a huge vault of movies they'd like us to buy again, this time on Blu-ray. If they get folks to buy a PS3, those folks will buy blu-ray movies as well.
    • While they may add HD-DVD drives to the Xbox, they are not planning on putting games on the HD Disks. For Developers on current gen systems claiming they are running out of room, this is not good for a next generation system. http://1up.com/do/newsStory?cId=3145247 [1up.com]
  • We just had another story about how MS might generate artificial shortages for some strange marketing reason. Now a discussion on how only a few months from now they might half the price? Right.

    What has so far been make or break for a console? Is it hardware? Well no, sorry console fans but if you want the best graphics you buy a pc. Is it who launches first? No, the crown of console king has been won to many times by "newbies" from the ones who been there.

    What makes or breaks a console im my opinion is s

    • >>X-box had halo, nintendo had ehh... final fantasy? or was the sony?

      X-box has Halo, PS2 has Final Fantasy, and Nintendo has... Nintendo.

    • with anywhere from 6months to 1year between the release of the 360 and the PS3..There should be a good game base..Sports fans are looking for their next EA Sports purchase..FPS'ers are looking for their military shooters..etc.etc. The problems(and reasons) why I haven't bought a GC is the game base,the controller and it looks like something my 5-yr old niece would use to play games. Now I have a modded XBox(LEDs,better data cable,custom jewels) and it LOOKS like it's fast..then you turn it on..and with my
  • If console price/overhead = winnar, then wouldn't Nintendo be at the top of the mound?. It might just be me, but ML is definatley way off the mark on this call. XB360 might come out on top overall (in the end), but it isn't strictly due to console prices and devaluation.
  • Exactly how much Microsoft is paying for this advertising campaign. It seems like every day or two, there's a new story on the X-Box 360, usually comparing it favorably to Sony's offerings. I call bullshit on this, though. Console prices do NOT depreciate that fast. Given the fact that Microsoft subsidizes their console prices, and the fact that no other console has ever dropped in price that fast, there is virtually no way it'll end up being 1/2 of the price of a PS3 in one years time.

    The numbers look

  • We think that the Xbox 360 could be selling at half the price of PS3 in the latter half of 2006."

    Yes, the Xbox 360 could be selling for half of the PS3's cost in the latter half of 2006. It's also a possibility that the Xbox 360 will come with a free pony for every person that buys one. Microsoft could do that, but somehow I think that they won't. What a load of horseshit. There was an article in Famitsu where they got a tip from a very reliable source that the PS3 is expected to retail for $300 to $4

  • The worst part is that people think this is a good thing! MS just released stock info and has warnings everwhere about the poor sales expected.

    If the product was in such high demand, adn such a stellar product, 50% price reductions in less than a year WOULD NOT be on the top of the list. The 360 and PS3 are failed products, they will fail.

    I've been saying it (and taking massive attacks/flames) for months but it will turn out to be true. To all those who modded me down and flamed on, please re-read through m
  • Why would anyone buy it when they know it's gonna be 50 bucks in 2012!? yadda yadda yadda...

    See, kids, there's these people called early adopters and pretty much anything consumer electronics oriented- they buy it ASAP. Why? Because they can, because it's fun, and because not everyone can get one.

    Early adopters have been enjoying HDTV, pixel shaders, portable MP3 players, progressive scan DVDs, hell- MICROPROCESSORS and AUTOMOBILES for alot longer than the rest of us.

    With consumer electronics enjoying an
  • What is with all the replies about the lack of strength of the 360's lineup?

    FPS - Perfect Dark Zero, Quake4, Call of Duty 2, Gears of War. There has never been a release with a better set of FPS games. PDZ will be fantastic, and anyone who has played COD2 in a Wal Mart has walked away beyond impressed.

    Sports - Typical EA and ESPN lineup with nearly every sport being represented. NBA NFL Soccer CBB - only major gap is college football.

    Big Sellers - Saints Row will be out in early '06. This i
    • "What is with all the replies about the lack of strength of the 360's lineup?"

      It's just comments from ignorant anti-MS (but gung ho pro-nintendo, pro-Sony) trolls. They don't even bother to look into the launch titles, but freely come here and say they are weak. Thanks for this post. I think you are right, the launch titles and titles coming for 360 in the next 6 months will be good (i.e., at least appeal to XBOX gamers)...
    • What about all of the people who don't care about first-person shooters or sports games? If the Xbox 360 has the same limited selection of games as the Xbox, I will not buy one. There is more to the world of games than Halo and Madden.
    • There are probably two reasons you see people complaining about the 360's lineup:

      1. Many people are interested in games that aren't sports games or first person shooters. Your list demonstrates this problem perfectly.
      2. Most people don't consider games 6 months out to be launch titles. The issue is whether or not it's a good buy at launch, not whether it might be a good buy someday.

      Honestly, number 1 is enough for me. The genres that are being focused on just don't interest me, and the few 360 games I mig
  • SO M$ leaked this, but does it really matter? Who is going to be buying a xbox 360 when they first come out? Not people who have read the article, but how many people is that really? So a few hundred people decide to wait a couple of months and pay half price for the xbox 360, but M$ still has gotten all the money that they need from the preorders and people trying to get it a soon as possible
  • "Citing Sony's financial woe's and Microsoft's deep pockets, they predict '...Microsoft's Xbox 360 should emerge as the early winner in the next round of the game console wars.'"

    If losing hundreds and hundreds of dollars per console is considered "winning", I'd rather lose. Yes, they make money with game sales, but think about it, how much do developers pay in licensing fees? How many games does the average person buy over the life of a console? Multiply those two numbers, then subtract the loss MS gener
  • ... this console won't be the $4 BILLION LOSS that the first X-Box was,
    I'll believe it when I see it. The thing is over priced, and has too
    few good games.

    I have yet to see a *must have* system-selling title. There is no Halo.

    And let's face it, X-Box was a "halo-box" for most first-time buyers.

    The only title that was remotely interesting was OBLIVION and its delayed.

  • The estimates for "Analog IC, ASICs, I/O" after 3 years are $20 for the Xbox and $40 for the PS3. Ignoring the fact that they already itemised USB, Ethernet, Wi-Fi and controllers so there's bamn little I/O left to account for, where did they pull those numbers from? Sony, with 50 years of consumer electronics experience and in-house assembly lines will end up paying 100% more and Microsoft? Yeah, Right.

    Sony will be paying more for 256Mb of Ram than MS will for 512? Laughable!

    Microsoft have 1 loss-making co
    • Microsoft have 1 loss-making console and some keyboards worth of experience manufacturing consumer hardware

      Actually, Microsoft has no console manufacturing experience. Nor will they gain any with Xbox360. The XBox was originally manufactured by Flextronics and now has a second source, I don't remember who though I think Solectron. The 360 is similiarly outsourced.

      Now, you may have never heard of those companies, after all, you won't run down to Best Buy and pick up any electronics with the Flextronics

  • have you actually seen how much xbox360 retails for? I looked at the walmart catalog and couldn't find a single NONBUNDLE version of xbox360. The bundles are WAY more expensive than the MSRP of $400. This is expected though when a single game cost between $50 and $70. So my point is that at the current prices I highly doubt that MS will build up enough momentum so that they can afford to cut down the price in half and still be making any profit. But then again xbox never sold for a profit either so who kno

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