1000 Xbox 360s $100 (each) on Amazon.com on Thanksgiving

I wished we could have deals like this too in europe

 

Agreed, especially is Europe is a tougher market for MS to really succeed in. Could be though because of the PS3 that hasn't launched here yet, although a 1000 consoles here and there really don't make a difference...

 

What a joke. Their whole site has ground to a complete halt. They shouldn't offer these crazy deals/sales if they don't have the infrastructure in place to handle the load. Looks like I (and probably many others) aren't going to get one at this crazy price because the site is completely unresponsive. I already have a 360, but I was thinking about giving one as a gift. Oh well.

[edit] Sold out already. Of course I get the reloaded page when it's already sold out.

 

I wasn't able to get the page from even reloading. My friend manage to get the page to load but when he click on the button it had sold out. This thing sold out in seconds. The next best deal I found was at Circuit City when you buy a premium system, you get your choice of a game up to $60.00.

 

I was asked the question. It was simple addition. After I answered it I got an error page. WTFFFFFFF? When I reloaded I got the Sold out page. Oh well.

 

yep i had the site ready and waiting at 10 50 am, kept clicking the link and hitting refresh waiting for the sale to open, then the site just goes dead and refuses to load any page. by the time i get it to load it was sold out. fuck amazon

 

ah shit(botched reload)

Well if none of us scored a unit...who the hell did?But ya...major bs was happnin on the site.

 

exact same thing happened to me. what a let down.

 

Exact same experience here, and that was trying from three different connections [isps] too.

 

I was switching between cached pages (which was giving me way better results than reloading), and in a 2-3 second span I went from "...come back at 11AM..." to "Sold out at this price."



Sheeeee-it.

 

1000 units sold out in 29 seconds. Brought the site down for 15 minutes... Doh Sorry to the folks that did not get one but the chances were very small given the overwhelming demain.

 

I wonder quite what the point of this promotion was? For Amazon, it meant taking a hammering in a blitz of activity to make not a huge amount of money I guess. Would it serve to attract customers like normal sales? Would people who missed the chance of getting an XB360 for a hundred bucks hang around to buy other stuff from Amazon? I'd have thought most would storm out the room in a huff!

For small giveaways like this, I think a competition is better. It's paced, ordered, and not going to offend people who lose out.

 

If by "sold in 29 seconds" they mean fully processed, then maybe. But they were claimed almost instantaneously. I'm not sure how they went about it.

 

I'd bet my socks that microsoft had a hand in this. The timing was too convenient, right after all the PS3/Wii buzz hits it's peak.
And from a marketing point of view, what better way to prove your system is desirable than to have it take down the worlds biggest online retailer.
However as a form of advertising, this is one of those ones that is probably hard to quantify just how much impact it will have. Risky yes, but I'd be inclined to believe it was well worth it.

 

Has Amazon responded anything to you on the matter?

 

I was discussing this with a friend, and he suggested Amazon were using this as a test-case of their new system. As an online retailer, Amazon can be subjected to peak demands that run in excess of their server capacity. Rather then increasing server capacity to accomodate peak demand, which then is idle 99.9% of the time but still costing money, the idea is apparently to scale up the service somehow. If so, this would be a good way to create a test-case without losing too much money, but I have no sources other than my friend.

 

How does scaling up the service differ from increasing server capacity?