xbox 360 confirmed pricing

[Powderkeg]

that its not hd era ? Hd standards

85% of the US population, and 95% of the rest of the world don't care. We don't have HDTV's.

As for looking at the images u can do more shaders but your loosing out on the actual quality of the image . So its a trade off and its not hd . Thus your buying a 400$ console or there abouts for a res thats infior to the other system .

Precisely. It's a trade off for either system. MS picked 720p and FSAA, Sony picked flexibility for the developer. Which is actually better is a matter of personal opinion, nothing more.

That would be as bad as what ms pulled with the hdd .

Sony never promised, not even implied that all of their games would be HD resolutions, unlike MS and the HDD.

but u have fp10 on the xenos which will be fast ,less gpu intesnive and bandwidth intensive than the nvidia soultion .

And less accurate, and lower quality. Another one of those trade-off's.

How so ? xbox 360 has its edram for framebuffer which is another 32gb/s i believe . The ps3 is going to have to use its bandwidth to either memory pool for its framebuffer .

Both systems can offload their frame buffer into a seperate pool of memory. Cell does not use up video memory bandwidth, the 360 CPU does.

Well your expecting the more powerfull cpu to need the same bandwidth ?

How much bandwidth the CPU needs depends on the game. Multiplatform games will likely need the same CPU bandwidth on both systems, which will give the PS3 a video memory bandwidth advantage every single time.

But anway your still not factoring its edram bandwidth . Which will be of use .

Sure I am. I'm not discounting that at all, what I am saying is the RSX using XDR achieves the exact same end result. Furthermore, it is possible for Cell to provide the FSAA rather than RSX, which both removes that bandwdith load from RSX and the GDDR-3, and at the same time solves the HDR+FSAA problem.

But you also don't factor in compresion schemes . How do u know which one has the more powerfull compression ? That is the one that will be the winner imho

Compression is also another tradeoff. You increase bandwidth usage at the cost of GPU performance, since the GPU is required to spend extra clock cycles on it.

 

[Inane_Dork]

Well, Sony's add-on drive is actually internal, but I agree there's no way they make it standard.

If it's removable, that's what I meant. And it's removable.

 

[jvd]

85% of the US population, and 95% of the rest of the world don't care. We don't have HDTV's.

SO then u agree that bluray is worthless and shouldn't be in the system and they should just put in a dvd drive correct ?

Precisely. It's a trade off for either system. MS picked 720p and FSAA, Sony picked flexibility for the developer. Which is actually better is a matter of personal opinion, nothing more.

But sony promised 1080p games . 480p is no where near that . Broken promises like the xbox 360 hdd

Sony never promised, not even implied that all of their games would be HD resolutions, unlike MS and the HDD.

They required all videos to be in 1080p for the games claiming in game footage or rendered to spec . If those games come out at 480p your going to bet alot of people would be pissed. Even if its fancy word work like ms they will still get pissed.

And less accurate, and lower quality. Another one of those trade-off's.

Yet not every game will need fp16 . Actually we don't know yet if there will be any visual diffrence that one can see. However we do know from years of pc games that there are image diffrences at diffrent reses and fsaa lvls .

Both systems can offload their frame buffer into a seperate pool of memory. Cell does not use up video memory bandwidth, the 360 CPU does.

Can you post proof of that ? The cell cpu can use all the bandwidth to the 256 megs of xdr ram thus the ps3 can't offload the frame buffer to a seperate pool of memory .

Regardless of that you never added the edram numbers into your comparison .

Sure I am. I'm not discounting that at all, what I am saying is the RSX using XDR achieves the exact same end result. Furthermore, it is possible for Cell to provide the FSAA rather than RSX, which both removes that bandwdith load from RSX and the GDDR-3, and at the same time solves the HDR+FSAA problem.

yet it is never factored in .

Secondly the 10mbs of edram is allways there for framebuffer the same can't be said of the cell ram pool and bandwidth .

As for hdr + fsaa problem it solves nothing since there is no proof that the rsx can do multi sampling with hdr . If its ssaa its just going to increase bandwidth consumption that much quicker and once again your into the limits for bandwidth .

Not likely.

ati had a break down of modern gpu bandwidth usage and framebuffer was pretty high up on the list .

Compression is also another tradeoff. You increase bandwidth usage at the cost of GPU performance, since the GPU is required to spend extra clock cycles on it.

not all compressions cost gpu performance. Some compresion schemes have hardware acceleration for it

 

[Acert93]

Now, of course, Sony has a "get-out-of-jail-free" card and can charge up to $399 for PS3 without a second thought. While MS trips out of the gate, having lost both momentum and the advantage of being the only HDD-enabled console on the market

Ok, so lets say Sony launches at $400 in the US in the fall of 2006 (I still expect a fall 2006 US launch... just my opinion).

What is MS drops the 360 to $380 and the 360 core to $280 in fall 2006. Lets also assume a Sony HDD is ~$100.

PS3 => $400
360 => $280

PS3 + HDD => $500
360 + HDD = > $380

OUCH!

Add to it the fact the Xbox 360 will have a lot more games out by then. EA has 6 "launch" titles + 25 in the works. In fall 2006 they will be on their 2nd version of Madden / NBA Live. That is important because that means the 2005 versions will be ~$20. Xbox 360 will already be filling in the "reduced price" software bin.

And while the PS3 should have a LOT of good games at launch (PS3 dev kits with CELL/6800U SLI have been available longer than 360 beta kits! Granted, Alpha kits have been around a long time). But Sony will be facing MS 2005 software including but not limited to PGR3, Gears of War, PDZ/Kameo (one is bound to be good), ES: Oblivion, etc...

That is not counting what they have in store for 2006.

And then you possibly have Halo 3. From what we have seen GOW, PGR3, and Oblivion look solid (although GOW scares me on gameplay). You add Halo 3 and you have 4 really good titles + a very large selection of games.

Now Sony has time, but so far we have learned that a lot of games have become cross platform. Ridge Racer 6 and Resident Evil 5 being examples.

So Sony WILL have GTA, MGS, Devil May Cry, and so forth but it is shaping up that MS has their own franchises to go to battle against Sony's really really good exclusives.

So a lot of it is shaping up to be a battle of Price and Exclusives. For the middle of the road gamer who likes the exclusives on both sides it may very well come down to price.

Or it could come down to BR.

Or online.

But for gamers not looking for HD Movies (only 10M HDTVs total in US, even fewer have the required HDMI) or online (only 40M broadband connections in the US) it comes down to the games and price.

Games is a taste/fad issue... but price is real.

This all assumes Sony's has not been jerking MS's chain and will ship the PS3 at a high price point.

Would it not be rich (or poor?!) if Sony launched the PS3 at $299

 

[Inane_Dork]

Would it not be rich (or poor?!) if Sony launched the PS3 at $299

I bet that will happen. There will be one SKU at that price. And there will be one SKU at the $399 price. Just wait and see if things that were presumed packed in with the PS3 actually stay that way. They probably will, but you never know.

 

[JasonLD]

I don't think price point is what caused so much stir in this announcement, but fact that core system has none of the MS's hyped features. MS has just outdone Sony in terms of overpromising and underdelivering this time. After all the promise of standard HDD and wireless controller..this can lead to lot of misleading consumers.
None of this complaint would have existed if there was no core version...but with core version in existance, all the great stuff became "optional"...

 

[wco81]

There are already more than 10 million HDTVs in the US now.

There may be over 20 million after this year.

 

[mesyn191]

Yup, that is alot but still nothing compared to the number of people without HD TV's.

Console makers always cater to the majority so I've got no problem with them not bundling the HD component cables, just the pricing sucks ($40 for a cable?!!!) and the bait n' switch pricing tactics on the console itself are BS.

 

[Acert93]

There are already more than 10 million HDTVs in the US now.

There may be over 20 million after this year.

The last official projection I read for the end of 2005 was an estimate for 15M total units in North America.

So if you mean 20M after 2005, as in somepoint in 2006, then yes. The projections may have changed, but a 100% increase for this years projection (5M to 10M) would seem extreme.

Anyhow, my point was very very few of the ~15M HDTVs sold in the US have HDMI (= no BR movies). Interestingly the two people I know with HDTV neither have HDMI (both are component, one bought this year one bought last year) and neither will be playing games on them (they wont even get a console). That was the beauty of DVDs--they worked on every TV and looked better on every TV over VHS.

Like broadband we always need to keep in mind how many consumers actually have the hardware to take advantage of these features.

While B3D visitors may be geeked out on HD and new technologies and that may be of interest to us, the casual consumer (and even most hardcore gamers unless they are also audio-visualphiles or home entertainment system freaks with a lot of money) usually does not have a lot of this stuff available. Sony has ~35M PS2 units in North America alone. Even if every HDTV had HDMI and every single one was in a home, a home that was going to play PS games, the numbers are still way out of proportion.

And that is a very unrealistic situation.

 

[Powderkeg]

SO then u agree that bluray is worthless and shouldn't be in the system and they should just put in a dvd drive correct ?

I agree that both Bluray and HD DVD are probably 5 years too early to market as far as movies go. DVD-R's and other computer related uses are an entirely different matter though.

In the PS3's case, I would say it all depends on how many games use more than a standard DVD could hold, and how good those games sell to determin if it's worthless or not. If there are say, 3 "system sellers" that use more than a standard DVD worth of space on the disk, then yes, I would say it was worth including.

But sony promised 1080p games . 480p is no where near that . Broken promises like the xbox 360 hdd

480p is no where 1080p, but 20% of PS3 games supporting 1080p is still 1080p games, and thus, no broken promises. That's a little different from saying the 360 will include a hard drive, and there will only be one version of the ssytem, and then offering 2 versions, 1 without a hard drive.

They required all videos to be in 1080p for the games claiming in game footage or rendered to spec . If those games come out at 480p your going to bet alot of people would be pissed. Even if its fancy word work like ms they will still get pissed.

And what about the thousands of other games? Do you think some struggling developer is going to care what Sony requires from their videos that they use at press conferences?

Yet not every game will need fp16 . Actually we don't know yet if there will be any visual diffrence that one can see. However we do know from years of pc games that there are image diffrences at diffrent reses and fsaa lvls .

Not every game needs HDR, and as I said, Cell can provide the FSAA.

Can you post proof of that ? The cell cpu can use all the bandwidth to the 256 megs of xdr ram thus the ps3 can't offload the frame buffer to a seperate pool of memory .

http://www.beyond3d.com/forum/showthread.php?t=22457&page=1&pp=25

What Cell "can" do and what it actually does are two entirely different things. Yes, Cell can use all of the XDR bandwidth, now show me the game that actually does that.

And like I said before, the 360 CPU is limited to 10GB/sec. You think the HDD makes a difference? How about comparing 10GB to 25GB for your CPU? Think that's going to make just a touch of difference to your games?

But I don't believe in making comparisons like that, because that's not how things really work. No launch game, and it's doubtful that any game is ever going to be CPU bandwidth limited on either of these systems. There will be a bottleneck somewhere else first, so there will always be XDR bandwidth to spare on the PS3.

Regardless of that you never added the edram numbers into your comparison .

I don't add numbers because I don't debate theoreticals that can never be achieved.

yet it is never factored in .

Yes it is. I'm just not going to be silly, and assume that Xenos will be passing 10MB of data to the Edram 50 times per frame while running at 60 FPS, which is what a game would require to actually use all of that bandwidth in that pipeline. No game comes even remotely close to that now, there is no reason to believe a game would in the next 5 years. Again, you'll run into a bottleneck somewhere else first.

Secondly the 10mbs of edram is allways there for framebuffer the same can't be said of the cell ram pool and bandwidth .

Actually, yes, it can. Even back when Cell was supposed to be both processor and GPU by itself, it still would have used that pool of ram as it's frame buffer, and RSX has the ability to access it simply because their PC GPU's can do the same thing.

As for hdr + fsaa problem it solves nothing since there is no proof that the rsx can do multi sampling with hdr . If its ssaa its just going to increase bandwidth consumption that much quicker and once again your into the limits for bandwidth .

You aren't paying attention. RSX would not be doing the multisampling, Cell would. You basically use 1-2 SPE's to preform the exact same function as the logic within the edram on the 360. Chances are, they will be sitting there idle anyways, so why not? Cell was designed to have this graphics processing ability you know.

ati had a break down of modern gpu bandwidth usage and framebuffer was pretty high up on the list .

But no where near that high.

Keep in consideration the fact that the entire 360 system and RSX memory pool have the same bandwidth as a GeForce 6800 video card, but in the 360, that bandwidth has to be split between both the CPU and GPU. It's all video memory bandwidth for RSX though, and RSX can still offload the frame buffer to XDR.

not all compressions cost gpu performance. Some compresion schemes have hardware acceleration for it

Still a compromise. Instead of clock cycles, now you are using transistors to do the job, which increases cost and power/heat.

Unless you have infinite processing power, infinite ram, and infinite bandwidth, everything is a compromise, especially when you are on a $300-$400 budget.





Keep in mind that I am buying a 360, and called today to see about switching my preorder to the Premium package. I'm just calling it how I see it, and I see the HDD as a much smaller real-world issue that some members here seem to believe it is. If you were going to have misgivings about the 360, there are much more important issues to be concerned with.

 

[Silenti]

Obviously I can only comment on this from the standpoint of an interested gamer with a laymans hobby interest in the technology. I have tended over the generations to be something of an early adopter, with a rare exception. MS priced me out of the market for the time being.

The lack of a hdd standard does not really concern me that much. As has been stated on here it was used, even by first party developers, as a cache quicker than the DVD drive and for saved games.(The ability to use custom soundtracks not-withstanding as I don't personally use it nor did the games i purchased even support it.) Would this not make the use of a hdd more of a performance option as opposed to something that should be required? It appears as if the hdd will be required for backwards compatibility and obviously would be useful for downloaded content additions and updates, something critical to LIVE, so we shouldn't be surprised to see it as a requirement for LIVE. Anyone who does not have the hdd simply cannot take advantage of this. Disappointing yes, but not the deal breaker for myself.

MS lost me with the price for what is included. At 299$ I'm stuck with wired controllers or paying a premium price of 50$ (outrageous from my standpoint) for EACH wireless controller. The hdd price is only outrageous in comparison to its size. 20gb for 100$ is a travesty. 2.5" drive you say? Tell me why I, or any gamer for that matter, would care about the physical size of the hdd. It's performance, possibly, even likely, but it's size? If I had some use for it I may reconsider, but at that price I would seriously consider ignoring it entirely. The final straw is the 100$ for a wireless adapter. I freely admit to being shocked by these prices. Totally. The last is so ridiculous that I seriously question MS's committment to providing better content, services, etc than its competitors. (Or at least another, albeit, different, but vialbe option)

The PS3, should its price be remotely comparable, would get a hefty boost of consideration after this from those in my position. I refuse, flat out, to pay 400$ for the console, an additonal 50$ for each wireless controller beyond the first, Silver Live instead of Gold at that price (though my current account will extend me till Summer of next year), then tack on 100$ for a wireless connector, which looks as if it will be integral to the PS3, and 50-60$ for each game. (There have been numerous rumors regarding the price of next gen games and i would guess we may actually see some variation is this. First part AAA titles may well be 60 or more, with other titles spread out between 50 and 60$. This is obviously only a semi-educated guess on my part based on rumors and speculation.)

I could have lived w/o the hdd, or considered it a performance issue to upgrade later. The same with the wireless adapter, but not at those prices. If the 299$ option had come with a wireless controller I would still have considered it as a Fall purchase. Now I most definitely will not.

Unfortunately this leaves me out in the cold for probably at least a year, if not longer, on the new consoles. Nintendo has no games which interest me = out of luck even if they do come out with an attractive price. Sony has few games which interest me and I hate their controller designs = out of luck for the time being at least.(As a side note, if Sony shapes those two problems up(from my personal tastes), I would seriously consider them as the better alternative if the price points are similar and the PS3 comes with a BlueRay Drive vs. MS's high end version coming with a small 20gb hdd.

When MS released the Xbox I bought it that XMAS and have been extremely happy with my decison. I purchased more games for it than I have for the previous two generations combined. I stood in line for 4 hours for Halo 2's midnight release, something which I have never done for anything. Not for football playoff tickets, not for movie or book releases, and certainly not for a game release. I offer the above only to illustrate that I was (note the tense) one of those MS was probably counting on to drive sales into early 2006. Either MS fixes these problems or I may end up ignoring this generation of consoles entirely. Something which would be a great shame as I do love some of the games and have had front projection system hooked to my Xbox for the last 3 years. (Note - the projector is 1024x768 and thus falls in between SD and HD for resolution. The new consoles were probably going to drive my adoption of a higher resolution projector sometimes in the next 12-18 months depending on what was revealed over that time frame.)

In short, the prices have driven me away entirely. I would now seriously consider at PS3 if they produce a few more games which interest me and make available a controller which I would find acceptable. Even if it is 3rd party. MS has lost me for now, though Sony has not yet added me to their ranks obviously.

edit - I even forgot the price of a VGA or HD component cable setup and a possible battery pack solution (official MS or otherwise) for the controllers. That adds what? Another 30 or 40$ for the battery solution and 40$ for the cables? So let me see, 400$ for the console, 100$ for the adapter, 40$ for battery solution, one extra controller 50$ and throw in a game or two at launch = 6-700$ range for one game, two controllers and a 20gb hdd with no LIVE account. This is not going to happen. This doesn't even mention the remote which, if i read the release correctly, is implied to only be included in the 400$ option for a limited time.

 

[jvd]

And what about the thousands of other games? Do you think some struggling developer is going to care what Sony requires from their videos that they use at press conferences?

To this one and the ones above it . Sony is promising the true hd console . With bluray and 1080p games . If games come out in 480p it is no longer a true hd console .

Not every game needs HDR, and as I said, Cell can provide the FSAA.

Can it ? At what hit to the cell processing power ? At what bandwidth and ram cost ?

What Cell "can" do and what

show me a game that doesn't

Your the one trying to prove there will be bandwidth enough for the framebuffer .The burden of proof lies with u .

But I don't believe in making comparisons like that, because that's not how things really work. No launch game, and it's doubtful that any game is ever going to be CPU bandwidth limited on either of these systems. There will be a bottleneck somewhere else first, so there will always be XDR bandwidth to spare on the PS3.

with all the amazing things sony is saying cell can do how are u sure of that ?

The bandwidth avalible in the xdr is not a fixed bandwidth number . It can be the full amount or 0 at anytime . You can not guarantee that any game will have the bandwidth left over on the xdr ram for the framebuffer .

I don't add numbers because I don't debate theoreticals that can never be achieved.

you seem good at adding numbers and debating theoreticals when it helps out sony .

Actually, yes, it can. Even back when Cell was supposed to be both processor and GPU by itself, it still would have used that pool of ram as it's frame buffer, and RSX has the ability to access it simply because their PC GPU's can do the same thing.

Once again you can't count on bandwidth for your framebuffer that is being used for another chip. The demands on cell and its bandwidth to xdr ram will change with each game .

It is not a constant to add in unlike ms's edram . in one game u can have 10gb/s left over in the xdram or you can have 1gb/s left over in thexdram . The xenos allways has the full amount of bandwidht to edram in each game no matter what the x360 cpu needs .

You aren't paying attention. RSX would not be doing the multisampling, Cell would. You basically use 1-2 SPE's to preform the exact same function as the logic within the edram on the 360. Chances are, they will be sitting there idle anyways, so why not? Cell was designed to have this graphics processing ability you know.

the logic in the edram doesn't do fsaa nor does it do hdr . that is in the main die . Secondly your suggesting that you now have 2 chips acessing the framebuffer leading to even more bandwidth demands . Not only that but there is no metric to mesure the cell's ability to perform hdr or fsaa in any of its modes it can very well be to slow to be usable in real time .

So untill you can post data to back up that in games you will be able to use cell to apply post process or during rendering fsaa or hdr with out drasticly limiting the ps3s ability to render I wont even consider this .

But no where near that high.

Keep in consideration the fact that the entire 360 system and RSX memory pool have the same bandwidth as a GeForce 6800 video card, but in the 360, that bandwidth has to be split between both the CPU and GPU. It's all video memory bandwidth for RSX though, and RSX can still offload to XDR.

No they do not because once again your forgeting the edram and its ability to remove the framebuffer overhead .

You seem to forget the edram often when talking about bandwidth in regards to the two systems .

Still a compromise. Instead of clock cycles, now you are using transistors to do the job, which increases cost and power/heat.

Unless you have infinite processing power, infinite ram, and infinite bandwidth, everything is a compromise, especially when you are on a $300-$400 budget.

Depends on what gives the better gains . [/quote]

Its only a comprimise if you have to trade off equal power for something else . If you can get good 2: 1 compression you can reduce your ram count by half . Thus allowing u to spend more money on actual silicon area and transitors for the gpu which in the end may be many times greater than the original siclicon you devoted to the compression .

anyway good night. I have work tommorow and I spent all day in the pool , got bad sun burn and am very tired

 

[BTOA]

MS is just showing us what they are willing to do to make a profit next gen and its at the cost of us gamers paying more.

BTW, jvd is a Xbox fan who's mind has been clouded. Don't take what he says seriously.

 

[jpr27]

I guess Im just confused by some people's notion that the HD, well thats not so bad to lose. Ill probably be buying the $399 bundle as well but I cant get over how people dont hold corporations accountable for anything. As many have said, MS was leading everyone to believe that the XBOX 360 would have a HD (heck even wireless controllers). Yes this generation might be more expensive but MS pushed the notions of Live by itself dictated the use of a HD. (Not to mention how hard they made examples of the use of the HD with downloadable content and other "exciting" features etc.) They should of gone with the $399 price package or at minimum say the core package for $325-350 with a HD included.

Now if this news wasnt enough, I spoke again with my gamestore I preordered from and they pretty much stated what jvd was saying. Well guess what, they now CANT guarantee that the premium package preorders will be met. Some people might end up getting the short end of the stick. Now I have to hope that there are enough systems (premium) or I will be out of luck or settle for the core system (um Hell No). And you know stores will push that "alternative" at people irregardless. Even the Manager said this is a bad situation and could cost MS dearly if they dont have enough consoles to cover everyone. He also stated that people were pulling their preorders out of anger or upgrading to the premium package with the hopes that MS meets demands. People dont mind the price of the package deal but they sure dont like being put into this position either.

I think if MS wanted to correct this they would let anyone who Preordered the system (before this announcement) at least have the option of getting the core system with a wireless controller and a HD. I think MS purposely mislead the preordering consumer putting them in this position and should of never ok'd preorders until this information was released. Thats just my opinion and it will never happen I know but I'll throw it out there anyway

IMO MS just gave people on the fence who are not able to buy all the systems, a viable reason to wait for what the PS3 has to offer when its released. (final price, performance, etc.) As for gaining ground and trying to cater to Sony user base, they wont get them to come over pulling crap like this thats for sure. The thought of waiting even crossed my mind and Im an xbox fan.

 

[MasaC]

What if Sony decide to include a HDD standard with the PS3 now, just to bury MS?

They won't need to do that. All they need to do is price it at $299 and the war is won.

 

[kyleb]

The $300 version is absolutely pointless to the end user. Sure, many people won't need anything the $400 version comes with; but it still offers a more expensive controller, better a/v cables, and $150 retail worth of other stuff that if you are bound to be able to pawn off to make up the extra cost.

Also, I am very disappointed at the HDD not being standard. I'm not sure what Powderkeg was thinking of when he said that Halo2 had chunky load times, but Halo2 caches to the HDD and the only loading wait is when starting a game, other than that you can play start to finish without ever seeing a load screen.

they shoulda just gone with one SKU @ $360 w/ compnent cables, wireless controller, and HDD.

Simple, cost effective, and they hold their word.

Dumb move, but whatever, the $399 bundle is pretty sweet, stupid, but sweet.

A single package like you mention for $360 seemed like the obvious choice to me. Sure, that would be $60 more than people are accustomed to paying for a new console; but it would still be lower than any reasonable person expects to pay for a PS3 and a very reasonable price for such hardware. This two SKU strategy comes off as downright schizophrenic considering Allard's e3 promises. The 360's hype of ushering in an "untrethed" "HD-era" and offering an updateable and customizable experience has been whittled down to a couple optional accessories that make up some of the checkboxes on the premium package. So pretty much the whole talk at e3 has turned out to be hot air, one really to wonder what other surprises MS has in store for us between now and when the thing comes out.

 

[PC-Engine]

They won't need to do that. All they need to do is price it at $299 and the war is won.

You really think so? :|

 

[jvd]

They won't need to do that. All they need to do is price it at $299 and the war is won.

yup because sony would go bankrupt

 

[MasaC]

It's pretty much obvious that xbox 360 core system at $299 and the very pricey perhiparals is just a way for MS to justify the higher than standard price of $399 for the version of the xbox 360 the've been talking about since E3 and make that price seem like a real bargain at the same time.

Now, and this is a big "if", what if this skeem backfires? Imagine the following scenario:

MS produces some 80% of the initial launch shipment as the premium xbox 360 at a cost of $399 and the rest consist of non-HDD 360's to be sold for $299. But a price at $399 is considered as way too high for a majority of the potentional customers, especially in the holiday season when there's lots of other stuff you'd need to spend your money at. Then the $299-360 may seem alot more appealing since you still can play the games on it and that's what it's all about, right? You can always upgrade it with a HDD and maybe other third-party perhiperals later on at a lower price. In this scenario MS could quite easily find themselves in a postion that's not very desirable and they might need to very quickly cut the price just like they had to when they released the xbox1 in Europe at 479 euros.

We can all contribute to this to happen and that is to not buy the xbox 360 at all or just buy the one for $299. That way we'll send a clear message to MS that we want the standard price to be $299 and not higher. The customer is always right, you know.

 

[MasaC]

You really think so? :|

Yes I do. PS3 already has the momentum advantage and the stronger brand name.

yup because sony would go bankrupt

Why are you so certain of that? Look at it this way: Which is worse, to initially sell at a loss or not sell at all? Remember that Sony is launching the PS3 after the xbox 360 has entered the market. Sony also control the costs since they are manufacturing all the parts themselves and it's likely they have a longer perspective of those manufacturing costs.