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Microsoft's Xbox 360 Halo Special Edition
Price cuts are on the way for the Xbox 360

Many expected Microsoft to announce Xbox 360 price cuts across the board at this year’s E3. After Sony's announcement of a $100 price cut for the PlayStation 3 , Wedbush Morgan Securities analyst Michael Pachter predicted that Microsoft would slash the price of the Xbox 360 Elite, Premium and Core systems to $399, $349 and $249 respectively.

For those that labored through Microsoft’s E3 keynote, there was no such announcement. So if you were disappointed with Microsoft's E3 keynote and the announcement of a Halo 3-themed Xbox 360 instead of price cuts, this bit of news may make your ears perk up.

According to Microsoft Game Studios VP Shane Kim, a price cut is in store for the Xbox 360 game console. In an interview with Bloomberg, Kim talked of competing with the Nintendo Wii and revealed that "We need to compete effectively for that customer and part of that is getting to the mass market price point for the console. We definitely are working on that area."

Kim declined to give a date for when the price cut would occur, but a holiday 2007 price cut would do wonders for the platform along with the release of Halo 3 and Grand Theft Auto 4. “The timing depends on a lot of different factors and we'll just keep evaluating those,” said Microsoft’s Robbie Bach.

The price cuts may be financially feasible for Microsoft once the 65nm Falcon chips start rolling off the assembly line . According to Dean Takahashi, the 65nm IBM processor and ATI graphics chip are 50 percent cheaper to produce than their 90nm counterpart and also run cooler.


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360 vs PS3
By SiN on 7/12/2007 5:21:52 PM , Rating: 2
Its clear to us all how Wii has won, and the other 2 seem to just flex their muscles at each other dismissing nintendo. Personaly i think the PS3 price drop is tightning the noose on MS, i own a 360, but i'm also aware that the PS3 is a capable machine, much like xbox vs ps2. If i had the money, i'd also buy a PS3, my friend has the wii, and it is a gathering of friends machine. However, before anyone starts to slag MS, i might just point out that a significant price cut around the release of GTA might just nudge them further ahead of Sony.

We'll just have to see how the PS3 price cut fairs out, is it just like the release of it when people bought it in droves and then relaxed?




RE: 360 vs PS3
By joemoedee on 7/12/2007 5:32:24 PM , Rating: 4
I'd have to say its too early in the game to say Wii has won, or to say any have won.

Once the prices level out, and games become more plentiful (For all systems), then we'll be able to tell who "wins".

I definitely feel that Sony will be more competitive with the lower price tag, however it still will serve more of a niche market until the price comes down further to a consumer comfortable price range. (Or until the consumer decides they want a HD movie format player. That is where it's value lies currently, as a game system plus HD movie player)

MS needs to get their quality up to par, and do it quickly. I enjoy my Xbox to this day, and I enjoyed playing the 360. However the quality of the 360... if I'm dropping that amount of money on a console, I want to have confidence that it will work.

Nintendo... they're doing great. I just want to see more quality games available, or else it too will ultimately fall into a niche market.

All in due time... but at least one good thing is coming from the competition... Lower prices for the consumer!


RE: 360 vs PS3
By Etsp on 7/12/2007 5:51:32 PM , Rating: 5
No... there is a clear winner. That winner is IBM. Who makes the main CPU in the Xbox360? IBM. Who is responsible for making the Cell Processors of the PS3? IBM. Who Designed the CPU in the Wii? IBM.


RE: 360 vs PS3
By FITCamaro on 7/12/07, Rating: -1
RE: 360 vs PS3
By tuteja1986 on 7/13/2007 12:57:30 AM , Rating: 4
Microsoft doesn't really need to a price but I am so pissed off with sony :! they announced that around August sony will release a new starter pack instead of price drop.

USA $499 ($499 USD)
Europe $599 euro (825 USD)
Australia $1000AUD (864 USD)
UK 400 pound ($812 USD)

360 doesn't need a price drop as its got triple AAA title coming every month till the end of this year which will not be coming PS3.
Bioshock : August
Blue Dragon : August
Halo 3 : September
PGR 4 : September
GTA 4 with 2 exclusive expansion pack : October
Mass effect : November
Lost odyssey : December

Then you get all major 3rd party title that will come out for both platform
Rock Band , Internal Sonata , Burnout Paradise , Assassin's Creed , Devil May Cry 4 , Soulcalibur IV , Virtual Fighter 5 with online and lots more.

So when sony actually does a price drop world wide i don't see them getting the huge sales and this year sony has no exclusive triple AAA RPG coming out which is amazing as sony console are know for having great rpg.


RE: 360 vs PS3
By paydirt on 7/13/2007 8:51:15 AM , Rating: 2
Their line-up of games is excellent, for certain. There will be many people buying the console for a specific game. It these cases, people will HOPE for a price drop, but if it doesn't drop in price and that game they REALLY want to play comes out, they're going to buy the 360. Plus, most consumers don't sit and pine on the Internet waiting for price drops.

I myself bought a 360 because of Mass Effect (probably a one-year or nine-month exclusive) and Bioshock (I won't have to spent $250 to upgrade my PC's graphics card just to play the game)... and I'm very intrigued by Too Human (Jan 08 release). I believe Mass Effect will raise the bar for its genre.


RE: 360 vs PS3
By odiHnaD on 7/13/2007 2:17:01 PM , Rating: 2
I would be very surprised to see Mass Effect go multi platform (excluding PC that is) Bioware has been in bed with MS for the past 6 years or so and none of their recent titles (KOTOR 1&2, Jade Empire) made a jump to the hugely more successful (at the time) PS2, with that being said I think it would be highly unlikely for them port Mass Effect to a console with only 1/3 of the market share (as of now). Just my .02


RE: 360 vs PS3
By BladeVenom on 7/12/2007 7:39:49 PM , Rating: 2
Second place to ATI then, they made the graphics chip for both the Wii and the 360.


RE: 360 vs PS3
By ChipDude on 7/12/07, Rating: 0
RE: 360 vs PS3
By BladeVenom on 7/12/2007 9:58:48 PM , Rating: 4
But, we are talking about consoles . How well is Intel or Samsung doing in the console market?


RE: 360 vs PS3
By MonkeyPaw on 7/13/2007 7:56:18 AM , Rating: 2
I'd say Intel is doing well to NOT be in the console market. Do you think Intel couldn't make a console chip? Let's look at it this way:

Why would AMD or Intel want the console market? If I were a CPU manufacturer, I would much rather have the x86 desktop market over the cost-cutting console market. The volumes are higher for x86, and the profit margin is far better. IBM sells Cell/BE to Sony for $89. Intel sells Core2 chips from $90 up to $950+. In other words, Intel is making more profit per CPU on its C2D line, AND they get to sell more CPUs. Even the CPUs they sell for almost nothing are salvaged chips that would otherwise be scrapped. Put another way: Cell has almost the same number of transistors as Conroe, Conroe is already at 65nm, and Intel sells Conroe for more than Cell (at least when it's sold to PS3). Suddenly, I don't feel so sorry for Intel anymore.

So what about the die shrink for Cell? It won't help profits much, since Sony is going to expect a lower price from IBM for a CPU that's cheaper to produce. The older a console gets, the cheaper it gets, so the each component costs less. While IBM is making CPUs for consoles that retail from $250 to $599, Intel is making CPUs for Apple instead of IBM--a far more profitable client than a console maker.

The Wii and 360 are no different for IBM, so I wouldn't exactly call IBM a big winner, especially since IBM gets very little brand recognition being in any console--most of the credit and advertising goes to Sony, MS, and Nintendo.


RE: 360 vs PS3
By weskurtz0081 on 7/12/2007 11:42:32 PM , Rating: 2
If I remember correctly, IBM makes alot more money than Intel does. So, even without the console market, IBM is doing just fine for R&D.


RE: 360 vs PS3
By Master Kenobi (blog) on 7/13/2007 8:10:53 AM , Rating: 4
IBM's primary form of revenue is selling software systems. They sell you a block of servers, and they load up some software system on it, tie it into your network, etc.....

IBM makes very little on the raw hardware, it's mostly the support/software that goes with it that they make the killing on.

-IBM Competes with Sun and Microsoft in their major markets.

-IBM Competes with Intel and Sun in the RISC Processor market (High End Servers).

-IBM Competes with Telco's and Contract companies to provide solutions to the U.S. Government.

-IBM Competes with Oracle in the database market (See IBM DB2 vs Oracle10g)

Any questions?


RE: 360 vs PS3
By weskurtz0081 on 7/13/2007 9:02:17 AM , Rating: 2
Do they make more money than Intel?


RE: 360 vs PS3
By AsicsNow on 7/12/2007 5:49:44 PM , Rating: 1
Wii hasn't won versus those two systems. It created a new nitche, effectively removing itself from competing with them. We'll inevitably see a lot more people with a Wii and a 360/PS3 than we will ever see with a PS3 and a 360 (even if price wasn't as large of an issue) because the Wii is filled with almost entirely exclusive games while the other two share the majority of thier game libraries (aside from the few big time exclusives).

The Wii titles with the same names as thier "big brothers" on the PS3/360 will continue to be as different from those versions as they are from say a DS game sharing the same name. (Of course there are some exceptions to this)


RE: 360 vs PS3
By B on 7/12/2007 6:20:12 PM , Rating: 5
We must have different definitions of a niche. If your definition of a niche is selling your product to the broader market and further increasing the breadth of that market, then yes Nintedo has created a niche for itself.

"The Wii has been outselling the PlayStation 3, launched at the same time, by four to one in the US and by six to one in Japan." -Source, The Financial Times


RE: 360 vs PS3
By joemoedee on 7/12/2007 6:37:58 PM , Rating: 3
The Wii is in what I would consider the price range that the majority of video game consumers are comfortable in. ($199-$299)

If all systems were the same price, with equal availability, I personally believe we would not see the Wii dominating the sales.

Obviously we may never see a full featured Xbox 360 or PS3 for the same price as a Wii, due to their added tech and more powerful/expensive hardware. However as they get closer in price, the sales gap will decrease or may swing away from the Wii totally.

As the other systems come down in price, Nintendo will need to continue to release fun and innovative games, or else it will hold the niche marketplace or just be another fad.


RE: 360 vs PS3
By timmiser on 7/13/2007 1:44:59 PM , Rating: 2
quote:
The Wii is in what I would consider the price range that the majority of video game consumers are comfortable in. ($199-$299)


In theory that would be correct, but when have you ever seen a Wii system available in that price range? Usually you have to spend well over that to get the Wii as part of a game bundle.


RE: 360 vs PS3
By omnicronx on 7/12/07, Rating: -1