MS Announces 512MB Mem. Unit for 360 + Increased XBLA Game Sizes

[Arwin]

Are you sure about that. I mean do we know for certain that Sony takes bigger losses with PS3 than MS with X360 atleast in the western markets. I'm personally not so sure about that. We are looking at a rather large price difference between these systems, and all the estimates of the manufacturing costs that I have seen have something fishy about them.

Well let's take the Premium 360 and the 20Gb PS3. Assuming that all other differences are negligible and/or cancel each other out (I certainly doubt that at this point the PS3 components are cheaper), doesn't the BluRay drive alone make the 100$ difference already?

What I mean is that for justifying Microsoft making money on peripherals, the 360 should actually be more expensive comparatively than the PS3, minus the difference of the BluRay price. This means that either the BluRay component costs a lot less than 100$, or the components in the 360 cost Microsoft a lot more than the components of the PS3 cost Sony. And looking at the respective console's components, where the PS3 tends to have the more expensive parts in general, I don't see this happening.

Having said that, I do think that Sony will get the PS3's cost close to their selling price quite fast. But I also think that the 360 has reached that point already.

To return back on topic, mind you, a 512mb card is definitely a step up from a 64mb, so in general this is a step forwards. But as posted above, the price per mb is still ... ehm ... rather steep ... and you'd be silly not to get a HDD at this point.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Buying the full pack rather than the Core is the only sane choice, TBH! Economy wise, the Core is terrible value.

Still, regarding these card prices, as someone reminded me today, perhaps relative to high-street prices they're not too bad? You can pick up Flash dirt-cheap online, but in stores it has a huge mark-up. Argos are selling 512 MB SD at £18 (was £35). 512 MB's of XB360 card at £25 probably isn't any worse than Memory Stick at high-street prices. No different to HDMI cables!

And it's standard practice too. Pretty much every company does it. The best profits are always on the cheapest components. I guess the real 'issue' here is actually a big plus for Nintendo and Sony in bucking the trend and embracing an open, competitive storage format.

 

[DuckThor Evil]

Well let's take the Premium 360 and the 20Gb PS3. Assuming that all other differences are negligible and/or cancel each other out (I certainly doubt that at this point the PS3 components are cheaper), doesn't the BluRay drive alone make the 100$ difference already?

What I mean is that for justifying Microsoft making money on peripherals, the 360 should actually be more expensive comparatively than the PS3, minus the difference of the BluRay price. This means that either the BluRay component costs a lot less than 100$, or the components in the 360 cost Microsoft a lot more than the components of the PS3 cost Sony. And looking at the respective console's components, where the PS3 tends to have the more expensive parts in general, I don't see this happening.

Having said that, I do think that Sony will get the PS3's cost close to their selling price quite fast. But I also think that the 360 has reached that point already.

Well comparing the 20GB models from both sides paints inaccurate picture. Sony is pushing the 60GB model just as much or even more than MS is pushing the premium (as 20GB ps3 is not available everywhere), so in my book we are looking at difference of 200$ or even more, Worth noting again is that in Finland the difference is close to 300 euros. Japan on the other hand has a much smaller gap in terms of dollars. My point is that the difference in purhchasing price at retail on actual systems sold is much more than 100$, close to 200$ imo. And it's fairly certain that the manufacturing costs between the 20 and the 60GB model is fairly identical.

I think this negates the points you made about comparatitive costs, for now anyway, if MS drops the core and Sony starts to sell only the 20GB model then your model is correct. Although I must admit that the development costs of PS3 have almost certainly been much larger than 360s', and that imo naturally shows on the price, but the actual manufacturing part... I just don't think the difference is that big, not anymore anyways, when Sony has ramped up it's production and is already making some cost reductions.

I also believe Sony manages to lower the manufacturing costs in a nice way, but I can't help but feel that maybe they have already managed to make significant savings especially with Blu-ray...
Also I'd be very surprised if Sony doesn't turn profit with PS3 sales in Europe with the 600-680e price tag on the 60GB model, because if they don't, then the losses they are making in Japan are huge as the 60GB model is going for 350-380e. This kind of implies to me that Sony has some legroom going on, and maybe a pricecut coming soon in Europe?

MS can keep it's current prices as long as Sony doesn't really turn up the heat on them. I think there is little bit of cat and mouse going on and both sides are scared to make the move (kind of like you playing chess ) j/k

 

[TheChefO]

Buying the full pack rather than the Core is the only sane choice, TBH! Economy wise, the Core is terrible value.

Still, regarding these card prices, as someone reminded me today, perhaps relative to high-street prices they're not too bad? You can pick up Flash dirt-cheap online, but in stores it has a huge mark-up. Argos are selling 512 MB SD at £18 (was £35). 512 MB's of XB360 card at £25 probably isn't any worse than Memory Stick at high-street prices. No different to HDMI cables!

And it's standard practice too. Pretty much every company does it. The best profits are always on the cheapest components. I guess the real 'issue' here is actually a big plus for Nintendo and Sony in bucking the trend and embracing an open, competitive storage format.

The pricing sounds fair to me:

$20 8mb ps2 memory card
$30 64mb xb360 memory card
$50 512mb xb360 memory card

It is nice that ps3 includes a HDD with every ps3, but they aren't giving it away. Likewise, Nintendo is selling their console at a profit so they aren't giving away anything either. The only thing N and S are giving away are future memory card profits.

It is a shame that MS did not include the HDD standard in xb360 but they learned their lesson with xb1. PS2 proved a free HDD doesn't mean much to the consumer and they would rather buy memory cards while having a larger games library and a reasonable console cost.

 

[Arwin]

Well comparing the 20GB models from both sides paints inaccurate picture. Sony is pushing the 60GB model just as much or even more than MS is pushing the premium (as 20GB ps3 is not available everywhere), so in my book we are looking at difference of 200$ or even more, Worth noting again is that in Finland the difference is close to 300 euros. Japan on the other hand has a much smaller gap in terms of dollars. My point is that the difference in purhchasing price at retail on actual systems sold is much more than 100$, close to 200$ imo. And it's fairly certain that the manufacturing costs between the 20 and the 60GB model is fairly identical.

I think this negates the points you made about comparatitive costs, for now anyway, if MS drops the core and Sony starts to sell only the 20GB model then your model is correct. Although I must admit that the development costs of PS3 have almost certainly been much larger than 360s', and that imo naturally shows on the price, but the actual manufacturing part... I just don't think the difference is that big, not anymore anyways, when Sony has ramped up it's production and is already making some cost reductions.

I also believe Sony manages to lower the manufacturing costs in a nice way, but I can't help but feel that maybe they have already managed to make significant savings especially with Blu-ray...
Also I'd be very surprised if Sony doesn't turn profit with PS3 sales in Europe with the 600-680e price tag on the 60GB model, because if they don't, then the losses they are making in Japan are huge as the 60GB model is going for 350-380e. This kind of implies to me that Sony has some legroom going on, and maybe a pricecut coming soon in Europe?

MS can keep it's current prices as long as Sony doesn't really turn up the heat on them. I think there is little bit of cat and mouse going on and both sides are scared to make the move (kind of like you playing chess ) j/k

You make valid points but surely MS is similarly positioned to reduce its cost. If we just look at what it costs to get a Premium up to the PS3, you get the 40gb extra cheaper than the 360 (following their currently price per gigabite), you get the Wifi adapter cheaper, and you get memory card adapters cheaper (not available on the 360), you get a 1Gbit network card (though granted those probably cost nothing anymore), etc. And the BluRay drive. The 360 will and always can be cheaper than the PS3, I'm fairly sure.

The real reason is that the 360 needs to make Microsoft money, after the enormous 'investments' in the Xbox. That's what this is all about.

 

[scooby_dooby]

Buying the full pack rather than the Core is the only sane choice, TBH! Economy wise, the Core is terrible value.

Value depends entirely on the consumer. If I only play offline single player games, and never connect to the internet (4million people so far do this with 360), then the premium offers no extra value whatsover, other than the wireless controller and component cables. The storage space is basically irrelevant.

If you are a HDTV owner it's a no brainer, if you use marketplace at all, it's a no brainer, if you don't fall into either of those two categories, it's not so simple.

 

[infinity4]

put off by price. i would prefer carrying HDD on HDD box that comes with HDD packaging...
...
...
...if i didn't sell my 360.

 

[AzBat]

I'm thinking that if it were possible someone would have already done it. It just seems too lucrative to have gone untapped for a full year for something that technically trivial.

There must be some legal or technical reason. Like algorithmically checking for a valid device key or something.

It was done on the original Xbox by a Chinese or Taiwan company.



I'm sure once somebody figures it out one will show up on the Xbox 360 as well.

Tommy McClain

 

[Frank]

Most of you look at it from a consumer POV: This is how I would want it, for me to happily buy it.

Microsoft on the other hand, is solely looking at maximizing ther profit. Will they make more money if they decrease prices by 25%? Assuming 25% of the sales price to be hardware (and not counting taxes), do twice as many people buy one if we do so?

Monopolies are really nice in that context. Especially if you have more money than God, and are comitted to suing anyone who thinks they can compete.

 

[Fox5]

Can't the Xbox 360 use USB memory sticks? I remember people hooking ipods up to the 360 and it reading them...

 

[Platon]

Can't the Xbox 360 use USB memory sticks? I remember people hooking ipods up to the 360 and it reading them...

Yes, it can read memory sticks, I have several times had pictures on a memory stick that I have connected to the 360 and shown them for friends on the TV, so that works, never tried though to save on it...

 

[infinity4]

Sorry to bump this thread but I have a serious question regarding memory card sizes.

Which size should I go for? I am hesitating between 64MB and 512MB, is there any incentives to go for 512MB when I am

- only using MU to back up game profile savefiles (savefiles that are created when you start a game, normally storing game stats and progresses etc) and gamertag profiles (they don't change size a lot over time do they?)
- planning to store game contents, ie downloads that I can redownload, on my big 104GB HDD.

 

[Dave Baumann]

I use a 512MB for portability of two profiles, a theme and my game saves. I'm currently using about 150MB and that floats up to 200MB on some game saves (Bioshock, for instance - I tended to keep a hitory of saves and they also get rather large the further into the game).

IIRC mine also came with a free copy of Geometry Wars.

 

[[maven]]

I'd also grab a 512mb one. I currently have a 64mb one (used similarly to Dave's as backup / mobility) and it certainly isn't big enough...

/glares at Orange Box

 

[archangelmorph]

Yes, it can read memory sticks, I have several times had pictures on a memory stick that I have connected to the 360 and shown them for friends on the TV, so that works, never tried though to save on it...

Can anyone confirm whether this works?

I wouyld love to know because if it could then that would be a rather huge blessing in disguise..

I would do it myself but my 360's still in the repair shop..

 

[AzBat]

Can anyone confirm whether this works?

I wouyld love to know because if it could then that would be a rather huge blessing in disguise..

I would do it myself but my 360's still in the repair shop..

You should be able to use pretty much any kind of USB storage on the 360 to stream music, video or pictures. But that's it. You can only save to Xbox 360 memory units. What exactly are you looking to do with a memory stick?

Tommy McClain

 

[archangelmorph]

You should be able to use pretty much any kind of USB storage on the 360 to stream music, video or pictures. But that's it. You can only save to Xbox 360 memory units. What exactly are you looking to do with a memory stick?

Tommy McClain

Saving data to it.. thanks for the clarification..

 

[J_Saint]

You can only save data to the 360 HDD or memory unit.

 

[AzBat]

Saving data to it.. thanks for the clarification..

If you're looking to back-up your data then I'd highly suggest using one of Code Junkies products...

http://us.codejunkies.com/shop/Departments/Xbox360.aspx

XSATA, XPORT or Transfer Kit.

Tommy McClain