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."
Or... (Score:2, Insightful)
$0 for not having an Xbox 360 at all. That's the option I'm going for.
Re:Or... (Score:5, Insightful)
Or buy the Xbox but not the Live part. Single player games are more fun anyway with better story vs. online with teeny boppers and a gamethat goes forever with no real point. Like FF elevn.
Re:Or... (Score:4, Informative)
If you're stuck playing with teeny boppers, you're playing the wrong game.
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can't. there's a contract (you have to get it directly from MS)
"The biggest catch is that, for now at least, it seems like you have to find an elusive Microsoft retail store to take advantage of the deal."
and they will fuck you with a red hot poker if you cancel.
"Oh, and if you're strapped for cash and can't make a payment? Get ready to pay Early Termination Fees. Engadget has a nice schedule of those. They start at $250 for the first 3 months, drop to $240 on month four and then drop a further $12/month af
Re:Or... (Score:4, Funny)
*rolls eyes* and I gave up my TV and cut the cable a decade ago.
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Cool story.
Try it for Internet subscription and computer purchases.
That's like saying a 400$ bike is cheap because it costs much less than a car.
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Re:Or... (Score:5, Funny)
However I live 30 miles from my house.
Man, that must be annoying. :-)
Re:Or... (Score:5, Funny)
That's divorce. The wife got the house. He got the restraining order.
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The 360 has no big exclusives.
Halo 3, Halo: ODST, Halo 4, Gears of War 1, 2, and 3, etc...
Those are just the ones off the top of my head.
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Steam? [arstechnica.com]
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I have a first generation 60Gb model and I've had to have it repaired twice already.
Re:Or... (Score:4, Insightful)
ps. Before you slam Sony for root kits, I'd suggest you read the history. It's not related to a PlayStation at all, and is old and apologized for.
That's funny, the CDs with the rootkits and the consoles both seem to say SONY on them.
If SONY doesn't want me to conflate rootkits distributed by SONY with games consoles distributed by SONY they can just not put SONY on one of them.
Until then, SONY is the rootkit company, the end.
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So you mean if you implement a software and sell it and then I inject a virus I created into the software with your name on it without your consent, now you are the creator of the virus, right? ;)
Wrong. If I buy a company developing rootkits and putting them on CDs, then I have failed to do my due diligence if I don't know what the company I'm buying has been spending their money on, what they're up to, if they're planning to massively break any laws, and so on. Sony failed to do their due diligence and as a result they purchased a criminal organization. When they folded it into their own corporatocracy they became a [more] criminal organization. There is no system of logic under which they should b
Let me introduce you... (Score:5, Insightful)
To cell phone plans.
Prepaid cellular (Score:2)
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Their phones are a generation or two behind the new hotness but if it's $$ from my own pocket, they were more than adequate (especially when grandfathered into their $25/mo voice-and-data plan).
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I just switched from Tracfone to Virgin Mobile in November when I needed to get a smartphone for work. I don't get signal in my apartment or at work or at my parents (then again, AT&T and Verizon only work at work because there's cell towers for both on top of the building) but I'm still happy pocketing the other $35/mo Verizon/ATT would charge for a similar plan and just hopping on wifi in the places that don't get Sprint's signal.
Virgin charges no ETF (Score:2)
Um, $200 + $35 per month is a cell phone plan
It's not a "plan" in the sense of a two-year contract with an early termination fee.
$400 for the phone and paying $10 a month on pay as you go.
A $400 phone sounds like a smartphone, and $10 per month sounds like dumbphone service: few minutes, no data. Since when do the carriers let the user activate dumbphone service on a smartphone? Or what am I missing?
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I only pay for the data because I moved jobs from a place which had wifi to one which didn't. A smart phone works quite well without 3G assuming you have data at home and work.
I just worked out how
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If you don't mind a lack of choice, you can march into a brick and mortar store and buy an unlocked phone. In the US, there is at least one big retailer selling unlocked phones. And they'll happily take your cash for it.
Not even sight u
Hyperbole (Score:3)
You're claiming you've never heard of a cell phone plan?
No, I was making a figure of speech [wikipedia.org]. With no-contract service becoming affordable, it has become practical to shop entirely from the prepaid rack.
Multiple consoles (Score:3, Insightful)
So you're paying almost $75 for the privilege of laying out small cash now.
This privilege is valuable to working class families that have a lot of kids but not a lot of savings, especially when a lot of newer console games have been following in PC games' footsteps in eschewing shared-screen multiplayer in favor of LAN or online multiplayer. Thus one has to buy a separate console for each gamer in the family rather than one for the whole family as it used to be in the split-screen era.
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actually, you're paying a privilege to have the limited device too. 4GB is nothing for storage. I'm not a Xbox360 fan, but you'd have to be lacking common sense to buy one without a substantial hard drive or a plan to replace the hard drive. A lot of functionality is based on having a large hard drive, though you could always buy one later and replace it (which is what power gamers are probably doing anyway).
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For the most part, I agree with you. Paying a low up-front cost but a little more in the end is a good option, and not just for low income folks. (Emphasis on option.) There's a opportunity cost related to whether or not you tie up that extra ~$200 in the console now, or keep it on hand for other uses for the time being. Just because you can afford to pay cash outright for a car, for example, does not mean that it makes sense to do so.
However, when you say Thus one has to buy a separate console for each ga
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However, when you say Thus one has to buy a separate console for each gamer in the family... No, no one doesn't.
I will admit right now that I'm out of touch with the Xbox 360 market. In households with more than one gamer, how are games whose only multiplayer is LAN or online typically played?
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In households with more than one gamer, how are games whose only multiplayer is LAN or online typically played?
"Taking Turns." The same way it was dealt with 20 years ago when I wanted to play Dragon Warrior II and my brother wanted to play Contra.
And plenty of games have split screen. Mostly shooters and sports games, but those seem to be the most popular genres on the console, so they can still play alongside their brothers.
Or perhaps you are seeing the LOD system (Score:3)
The few games that excel at split screen (Halo Reach and Gears 3 are good examples) have noticeable graphics decreases when in split screen. Many companies don't seem to take the effort to build a LOD (Level of Detail) system into their code
Or maybe they are building in a LOD system, and the "noticeable graphics decreases" are the LOD system doing its job when the game is run in two 768x352 windows or four 512x288 windows instead of one 1024x576 window.
Re:Multiple consoles (Score:5, Insightful)
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The kind of person who realizes that, at least in America, a significant fraction of the poor people are people who would not be poor if they did not buy into No Money Down, Layaway, Payday Loans, Rent To Own, $75 Xbox 360 schemes.
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For the most part, I agree with you. Paying a low up-front cost but a little more in the end is a good option, and not just for low income folks. (Emphasis on option.) There's a opportunity cost related to whether or not you tie up that extra ~$200 in the console now, or keep it on hand for other uses for the time being. Just because you can afford to pay cash outright for a car, for example, does not mean that it makes sense to do so.
In my opinion comparing this to the purchase of a car which is a practical necessity for most people is a bit disingenuous. And if your budget can be broken over 200 dollars, again in my opinion, you should be worrying about more important things than buying the latest video game console.
Copy of each game for each PC (Score:2)
one has three choices when it comes to consoles: Not buy one at all, buy one for each of the kids, or watch the shared console get utterly destroyed in a fight. [...] If the kids want games, that is what the PCs are for.
One likewise has three choices when it comes to gaming PCs: Not buy one at all, buy one for each of the kids, or watch the shared gaming PC get utterly destroyed in a fight. And one still has to buy a copy of each game for each PC [cracked.com].
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Checkpoint starvation (Score:4, Interesting)
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That would only be the case if you were working through one of the temples in Majora's Mask. At any other point in the game, you can immediately save and quit by warping to a checkpoint.
I was referring to the very beginning of the game, before the three-day cycle starts.
And it really doesn't help your argument to bring up a game that's over a decade old.
Nor does it especially help yours to take as an assumption that no game for a modern platform has the same flaw as Majora's Mask, not even any examples on the list I linked.
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Reduced 'liquidity'(in the grim poor-people sense): You plunk down the $99 and make a (presumably legally binding, or at least more legally binding than you'll ever afford to lawyer out of) commitment to pay the rest for two years. I hope your income and expenses are stable, even though you don't have enough savings to buy an xbox... U
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It's no different than student loans, mortgages (any loans really), leasing a car, etc... you pay more in the long run and in return, you get the product sooner than if you had to pay for it up front. This business model is what enables people to go to college right out of high school, to buy a house before they're 40 and to get a car that they need to get to a job to get money for the car.
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I was with you right up until this last one.
In most US cities...this just is not really a viable option. Too far (and dangerous) to ride a bike (not even considering the weather in the area)....and public transportation is just not a realistic way to actually to / from work in an orderly manner.
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My kids get the older consoles. The ninety nine dollars went to a PStwo not any of the newer units. Also they play older N64 and GameCube games.
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Money now is always better than the same amount of money later.
the goal is to keep people from PSN (Score:3, Insightful)
Sony is releasing a new console soon. 10 to 1 odds they will release a new version of PSN and a premium version of PSN as well.
this is meant to make people think twice about buying a new PS4 and pay for PSN. why buy new PS4 if i just signed up for a 2 year x-box deal?
the hardcore i play every single kill/hack everyone to death game 7 days a week on every console 10 years back people aren't the target of this
it's people like me who have a PS3 i use only for blu rays and i've been thinking about an x-box with kinect for the kids people are the target of this
Slow news day? (Score:5, Insightful)
I've heard of slow news days, but seriously, what is this shit?
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Wait a minute, pay *less* now in exchange for greater incurred expense later on? If only there a way we could do this on a much bigger scale than with just Xboxes... Like put down a small amount now to get the consumer hooked and then have them pay the rest off later. A revolutionary concept indeed... I've heard of slow news days, but seriously, what is this shit?
You mean to tell me, that this house that I bought for the great price of $200,000 (talked those suckers down from 210) will actually cost me $450,000 by the time the mortgage is paid? NOooooOOOooooooOOooOoOoOOoOoooO!
But seriously, the cost difference is $75 which after 2 years works out to 19% interest (slightly more if you decide to get the second XBL card 12 months later instead of up front). Not great, but far from exploitative. Plenty of people willingly enter into credit card contracts for highe
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)
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Smartphones, Cars, Premium Cable, pest control (Score:5, Insightful)
Or didn't you realize an iPhone really costs $2,000; DVR Equipment fees are really a fleecing, a $20k car really costs $36k, and pest control really costs $240, not $20/month. Gillette razors are also not 5 dollars.
Oh and mortgages are a really bad deal. You pay like 150grand extra, why not just pay cash up front?
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...because most people don't have two hundred thousand dollars laying around to just buy a house someday, or thirty thousand dollars extra to purchase a car in cash?
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...because most people don't have two hundred thousand dollars laying around to just buy a house someday, or thirty thousand dollars extra to purchase a car in cash?
Houses wouldn't cost so much, if loans for them were not so common. Same for college tuition. The more people can afford something the higher the price goes up.
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While I can't speak for mortgages, I can speak for the cost of college education. Specifically that the blank check from the federal government for student loans is what enables colleges and universities to increase spending while expecting financial aid (in the form of student loans) to cover the change. Additionally, if a college/university is in a particularly enterprising area (like, say, Irvine, CA) a corporate monopoly on housing can also affect how much students are allotted and due to extremely high
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I've read (and no, I don't remember where) that the feedback loop between student loans and university spending is really strong and universities devote a lot of lobbying effort towards that.
It's really a form of long-term income tax used to fund university expansion.
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You don't need to purchase a car in cash. I bought mine with 0% APR and it has absolutely no administration/hidden fees (unless you want mailed copies of stuff other than the agreement and "receipt")
I simply waited until they were getting rid of the "old" models. Anyone who puts themselves in a position where they absolutely need a car right now is either saving enough money living far away that it's a wash, or deserves to be fleeced.
Re:Smartphones, Cars, Premium Cable, pest control (Score:5, Insightful)
Financing takes many forms, and this one is neither shocking nor very different from cellphones, which are generally accepted by a willing public. The best part about it is if this pilot plan works out, they can come out with FANTASTICALLY expensive consoles in the future, and people will just subscribe to 2 year contracts instead of shelling out the giant sticker price.
Re:Smartphones, Cars, Premium Cable, pest control (Score:4, Informative)
To demonstrate this point I once graphed buying a 1970s V8 Monte Carlo (horrible gas mileage) vs a Prius for a 5 year financing term. I assumed I would need to spend 150/month on repairs for the Monte Carlo, and that at the end of every year I would set the Monte Carlo on fire and buy another one. Still way cheaper for a 20 mile commute@ $5/gallon. Replace Monte Carlo with "beater civic" which gets 30mpg instead of 14 and the numbers are just a big joke.
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I call shens. Right now (as of 2012-05-08) a new low-end Silverado is $22,195 and a new low-end Prius is $24,000. That's a difference of $1,805. The Silverado has a combined fuel economy of 13 mpg whereas the Prius gets 50 mpg. At $4 /gallon, that's about 450 gallons of fuel. The break even point is 5850 miles. I don't know how you came up with 400k miles.
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Welcome to the 20th and 21st century, this is how all subscription models work. Or didn't you realize an iPhone really costs $2,000; DVR Equipment fees are really a fleecing, a $20k car really costs $36k, and pest control really costs $240, not $20/month. Gillette razors are also not 5 dollars. Oh and mortgages are a really bad deal. You pay like 150grand extra, why not just pay cash up front?
Exactly. I find it amusing that the concept of a loan with interest is apparently a topic worthy of discussion as if it were something we've never seen before.
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Yes, an iPhone really costs 2000 dollars but unless you don't like 3G and use it on TMobile, there is no way to get it cheaper in the US as the monthly charges on the three iPhone carriers don't go down when you own the device.
Don't you think MS would LOVE that to be the case for the Xbox? seems like this would be a good way to start down that road.
Avoid the 4 gig model in general (Score:5, Informative)
The biggest problem, of course, is that you're getting the model with the 4 gig hard drive. That could be a problem even if you don't intend to use the console online. First of all, you won't have the option of hard disk installs (which can make some games much more tolerable in the loading time stakes). Worse, there are a small number of games where you won't even be able to use all the features.
Forza Motorsport 3 and 4 have both shipped on two DVDs. Because the nature of the games doesn't make disk-swapping practical (unlike in an RPG like Blue Dragon or Lost Odyssey), the way Turn 10 managed this was by making the second DVD an optional "content" install. As I know myself from trying to set up a nephew's Christmas present one fraught Christmas morning, you can't actually do the full content install for the Ultimate Edition of Forza 3 or the full edition of Forza 4 on the 4 gig models. There's just not enough space for that and the various OS stuff that the console puts on there. So part of the game's content is unavailable.
The "irony" (and this isn't actually irony at all, I suspect it's fully deliberate) is that in Christmas 2010, a number of UK retailers were heavily pushing a 4 gig 360 + Forza 3 Ultimate Edition bundle (usually with Lego Harry Potter in there as well). They also had a nice stock of the 250 gig hard drives on sale. Of course, the cost of buying a 4 gig console and then the 250 gig hard drive for it was significantly greater than the cost of just buying the 250 gig console.
Sorry for the rant - that was a Christmas morning I'd rather forget. My key point - avoid the 4 gig model even for casual use. Hard drive installs are only getting more common as this generation goes on.
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That's a nice anecdote you've got there.
I've been using the original no-drive (i.e. 256MB storage I think) for... jeez 4 years now I guess. I've never ran into any problem what-so-ever with storage.
USB keys are a wonderful thing.
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They're also not free. And if you use the thing a lot, you're either going to go through a lot of them or be perpetually reinstalling/redownloading content. So again, higher cost over time.
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I disagree, all of the USB keys I've used in the XBox were free. I use 2 of them, both from conferences that were paid for by my company.
I have another dozen or so kicking around if I ever needed more space (though I can't imagine I ever will)
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That's great if you get to go to lots of conferences where you get free USB sticks. I've had a couple myself over the years.
Chances are that people who might be tempted by what's essentially a loan-purchase scheme like the one described in TFA don't get to go to those kinds of conferences.
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For me, the big story of this generation has been how all three console manufacturers have abandoned the traditional console philosophy of "switch on, insert game, play".
First you have the proliferation of different hardware models for the 360 and PS3 (the Wii hasn't committed this particular sin, though it does suffer from a surfeit of peripherals that are essential for certain games).
Next you have the insistence on all 3 platforms on mandatory firmware updates if you want to use any online features. The P
Shipping? (Score:2)
If you're using Amazon.com for your prices you'd best be damn sure you're choosing free shipping options. From what I'm seeing that's not universally the case for this stuff.
On the other hand if you actually buy the stuff from a store you're getting 299.99 + 49.96*2 = as close as doesn't matter to $400.
That's still a $50 savings, yes. That works out to 6.25% financing, which is probably on par with most such buy now, pay later deals.
I think what this submission meant to say was "Why you don't want to financ
What a great idea! (Score:2)
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Sacrifice. That is what you are talking about. Nobody in America wants to hear that. They want to spend spend spend.
Xbox Live? (Score:2)
Does this version of the Xbox come with wifi built in? I thought I remember a while ago dongles for sale since it initially didn't have it?
With 2 younguns and a cou
Xbox Live Gold required for online (Score:2)
Is Xbox Live required or can you just play all your games and movies like normal and it is only for online play?
On the Xbox 360, a valid Xbox Live Gold subscription is required for online play or to access Netflix. This is in addition to any subscription that Netflix or a game publisher might charge.
Does this version of the Xbox come with wifi built in?
The current model of Xbox 360 is the Xbox 360 S. It looks like this [wikipedia.org], and it has b/g/n Wi-Fi. If you bought a new Xbox 360 in the fourth quarter of 2010 or later, it was an Xbox 360 S.
With 2 younguns and a couple DS's, iPod/Pad, and a Wii
Online play is required for multiplayer in a lot of newer games that have no split-screen. To take examples of games for a console that you
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The 4 gig 360S model has a built-in adapter.
Preying on suckers - don't be a sucker! (Score:3)
Yes, this is a predatory "cell phone" style purchase plan. Yes, it's a bad investment. Yes, there are people dumb enough to fall for it. Yes, I think they deserve to be financially punished for sucking at math and common sense.
I've been an Xbox 360 owner for a couple of years. I bought mine second-hand, actually I bought two refurbs for about the same total cost as one brand new unit, then gave the extra one to a friend. I see at least 3-4 Xboxes posted every day on my city's "used crap for sale" RSS feed, and I live in a pretty catatonic Canadian city. I would expect most people within range of a Microsoft store also have a dozen inexpensive used consoles available within walking distance of their home. For $120 you'll even get a 20 to 60gb hard drive with the console, and I've seen the Kinect gadget go for $50 or so. It'll be an older model Xbox, and no they don't catch fire or RROD ten minutes after you start your game. Mine's already got well over two thousand hours of playtime, and it's crashed exactly once, due to a shitty game full of bugs - not the hardware itself. The defective ones were from 2 or 3 hardware revisions ago, and most of those units have already died (or been repaired).
Actually, these days I'm seeing a lot of people selling their old-style Xboxes because they bought the new slim model. I don't know why they do it, but that translates into more cheap second-hand consoles flooding the market. If someone's looking to get into the Xbox for little money, that's the way to go. No contract, no overpriced payment plan, and if three months in you decide you don't like being called a "fat gay nigger cunt" ten times a day by inbred little rugrats, you can resell the cheap console in a matter of minutes.
Companies know this flaw in humans... (Score:2)
Companies understand this common flaw in people: People look at the monthly cost and the upfront cost, but often fail to sum the monthly cost over the lifespan.
Its why people lease cars instead of buying them: its much cheaper to buy then to lease in most cases, but the cost per month of a lease is less. (They are just left with NOTHING at the end of the lease, rather than a car!)
Its why there is "rent to own" furniture places.
Its why people buy "free" android phones or iPhone 3GSs: They don't understand
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"Its why people buy "free" android phones or iPhone 3GSs: They don't understand that when you factor in the monthly cost over 2 years, an iPhone 4S only costs only %25 more, not infinity-more."
Your cellphone analogy falls on it's face. My cellphone company dies not offer a cheaper smartphone plan if I bring my own phone. I pay $80.00 a month if I get the subsidized phone or if I buy one for full price.
In fact it's cheaper for me to get the $199 iPhone4s than to buy one unlocked at $799 and pay the same
Uh, yeah (Score:2)
So you're paying almost $75 for the privilege of laying out small cash now.
So it's like interest, then. Why is this news?
Fools will be fools... (Score:2)
A lot of people cant do math, so they get suckered into the junky deal.
One thing missed, if you are not an online gamer, you skip the $60.00 a year Xbox live costs so buying it outright is even cheaper for many.
Uninformed (Score:5, Insightful)
First of all, if you get your xbox this way, it's warrantied for the two years you're under contract, compared to one year for the usual retail package. The extra year's warranty retails for $50.
When you figure in the extended warranty, the price gap (using the author's Amazon sale prices) shrinks to about $25. If you use the usual retail price of things it actually works out to be $10 cheaper to take the subsidized deal.
Secondly, yes, if you get it on sale and can pay up front, it's cheaper in the long-run. Welcome to the world of finance, asshat. In the end, for everyone else, you're paying a premium of just over a $1.04 per month for the privilege of having the thing now, rather than later. Try getting anything even close to that on a credit card -- at even a relatively modest interest rate of 9%, credit works out to $422 over the course of 2 years.
Nearly every goddamn article and blog on this acts as if Microsoft if fleecing everyone, when in fact the terms are very reasonable, if not generous. Of course they're counting on re-couping the costs elsewhere (games, peripherals, continued growth of XBL), but so be it. The fact that they expect to expand their revenue in this way is not underhanded, allows them to offer a better deal than credit companies, and frankly, is a good business move.
If you have philosophical differences with entering into such contracts yourself, then fine, but that doesn't mean this offer isn't valuable for other folks.
The Sam Vimes Boots Theory of Economic Unfairness (Score:4, Insightful)
"A poor man can only afford low quality boots that are $10 and last for about a year. A rich man can afford good boots that cost $60 and will last him for a decade. In that decade, the poor man will have spent more money on boots, and will still have wet feet."
Re:This assumes I want Xbox Live Gold (Score:5, Informative)
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You forgot the part where you're forced into the two year agreement for Xbox Live, much like a cell phone contract. You can't have it your way.
How is it 'forced' when you're accepting an agreement? Is there a guy with a gun making people pick this up?
It's just irritating how many people just come to /. to be anti-MS jackoffs anymore. If you don't want it, don't sign up for it, assholes.
It's forced in the situation described by the previous poster, thus making it invalid, as he further crarified with "you can't have it your way". (Think about the reason to put "in your way" in that sentence.)
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Re:Same reason as before... (Score:5, Insightful)
No, same reason as before –poor people have to make false economies:
At the time of Men at Arms, Samuel Vimes earned thirty-eight dollars a month as a Captain of the Watch, plus allowances. A really good pair of leather boots, the sort that would last years and years, cost fifty dollars. This was beyond his pocket and the most he could hope for was an affordable pair of boots costing ten dollars, which might with luck last a year or so before he would need to resort to makeshift cardboard insoles so as to prolong the moment of shelling out another ten dollars.
Therefore over a period of ten years, he might have paid out a hundred dollars on boots, twice as much as the man who could afford fifty dollars up front ten years before. And he would still have wet feet.
Without any special rancour, Vimes stretched this theory to explain why Sybil Ramkin lived twice as comfortably as he did by spending about half as much every month.
[Sir Terry Pratchett]
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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!
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.
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Food and a roof over your head keeps you physically healthy, entertainment keeps you mentally healthy.
Please tell me that it would incorrect to paraphrase the above as "the poor need video games"...
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Re:Same reason as before... (Score:4, Funny)
There are many forms of entertainment that are arguably better for mental health and demonstrably less expensive than video gaming.
Your hand doesn't count.
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What are they?
The library is free.
Walking in parks is free.
Joining local clubs is often free.
Shooting hoops at a park is awful cheap, on an hourly basis.
If you have the ability to play video games you have a TV. Over the air TV is free.
Hanging out with friends can be free.
Learning to play the guitar is as cheap as a used guitar.
Jogging is cheap.
etc...
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Wait, what?
Dude... when I was a young, broke man, we had better and far cheaper entertainment. We'd hang out somewhere with friends, sometimes playing actual sports (football = $10 or so.) I'd walk in the park with the missus. I'd go to the beach. I'd go hiking. I'd go to the library. There are a zillion ways to get entertainment that is far cheaper and far better for you than sitting stupefied in front of a TV while clutching a gaming controller.
Hell, even hanging around a bar with friends and/or getting l
Re:Same reason as before... (Score:4, Insightful)
Preach it. I took a job in a different city and moved here soon after to start work, while my wife and kids stayed put through the end of the school year. I find myself sitting in an empty house, in a situation where it'd be dumb to buy a TV when all my furniture will be moving here within the month. The library is a lifesaver. There's a bus stop near my house, and it's cheap to ride to another part of the city and just walk around to look at stuff. If I have to have passive entertainment, I can watch shows on Netflix (and I bet 90% of households who would want to buy an XBox already have a PC and Internet connection capable of supporting it).
I grew up with video games and I love 'em, but they're hardly something you've gotta have. For the history of the world up through 30 years ago, people managed to entertain themselves without them. It's still possible, you know?
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:4, Insightful)
The Amish, like every other culture, have a variety of things to do to pass the time and stave off boredom. I believe that the parent was trying to say people need entertainment of some for good mental health. e.g. playing ball and stick for a few hours is more healthy than staring at a blank wall.
Just as a note the Amish tend to be reasonably wealthy: virtually no costs but produce extra to sell. Check out the stories on the news sometimes about extravagant Amish kids who are experiencing their year outside the community.
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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
Re:Same reason as before... (Score:4, Informative)
Depends on where you live.
$7/hr in Mississippi or Arkansas is actually quite livable - I've done it.
$28/hr in New York City or San Francisco is starvation wages, in spite of being 4x larger.
Re:Same reason as before... (Score:5, Insightful)
It's bundled with the Kinect. And that's because the Kinect's sales figures have gone flat. Early adopters bought the hell out of them (even set a record), but then the software failed to materialize and sales have begun to stagnate. This is not a ploy to grab an extra $75, it's a ploy to get Kinect machines in more households. The extra $75 is just tacked on to leverage the risk associated with monthly payment plans.
Why? Maybe MS hopes a larger user base will inspire more Kinect development. They might have decided the Kinect is the "universal remote" in their "Xbox as home entertainment hub" scheme. They could just be trying to move units and recoup their investment.
(probably all of the above)
Re:Same reason as before... (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, the PC DRM is only "from hell" if you buy games with that DRM on it. I don't touch Ubisoft for that very reason, and it was a strong reason against buying games like SC2 (and quite likely Diablo 3 as well). Buy indie titles and you really don't have that problem.
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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:Same reason as before... (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
I'm pretty weary of that myth. Three years ago I built a computer with fairly reasonable specs, an ATI 4870 (was about $270) and a Core 2 Duo E6540 (about $150) and incidentals including memory, motherboard, etc all for about $800. To this date it's still running recent games just fine. The only people stuck in the upgrade rut are those that see running a game at anything other than max detail at 100fps as not being able to play the game, which is ridiculous.
Granted $800 is more than a $600 launch day PS3, but I can also use it for, well, everything I could need a computer for. I imagine someone with a lot more money could get even more ahead of the curve.
Re:Same reason as before... (Score:4, Insightful)
Well, you did buy a dell... and it was a laptop.
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Who the fuck cares?
Nerds.
P.S.: I thought we had already established that the /. subtitle should always be quoted in full.
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It's better then a really, really bad credit card, but only if you'd leave it on the card for a long time.
If you can pay off the cost in 9 months, even if it's on a 20% card, doing that still comes out easily ahead of this deal.
Bottom line is that this thing is basically like payday loan services - it exists for suckers who don't have the financial literacy to understand that it's actually a pretty horrible deal.