hot news straight off the press

[ABCMan]

here is a little snippet before it goes full public, DONT BUY A CONSOLE AT HE MOMENT in the uk/europe there is about to be a price crash.

ms will announce today a reduction in the price of the failing xbox console to £159.99, sony are dropping the ps2 to £169 at the end of this month and nintendo will drop the price of their lovely little cube to a staggeringly low £99.99 next month

you heard it hear first guys

ABCMan

oh and if you live anywhere near the reebok stadium go to the local tesco, they have their remaining stock of xbox consoles in the bargain bin at £139.99 as of 3pm today (sadly i dont live anywhere near there )

[ABCMan]

EUROPEAN PRICE REDUCED TO ESTIMATED STREET PRICE OF €249.99/£159.99

LONDON, 28th August 2002 - European gamers have even more to be celebrating heading into this Christmas shopping season as Microsoft today announced that the European price of its Xbox video game system will be reduced to an estimated street price of €249.99/£159.99, effective from Friday, 30th August.

thats the official announcement from microsoft

[ABCMan]

and here is sonys announcement (seems the've jumped the gun, they are dropping tomorrow)

If you were waiting for the right time to buy a PlayStation 2, it just arrived. SCEE has announced a price drop for the world's favourite computer entertainment system.

Gamers everywhere, rejoice: PlayStation 2 is coming down in price, to a recommended retail price of £169.99. The price cut will take effect from midnight this Thursday, the 29th of August.

[Laz]

Yep, just had that confirmed by someone in the PS2 forum at CDRomguide too. PS2 will be £169.99 from 29/8/02.

[prime]

man the xbox is SOOOOO cheap, ms is practically giving it away.

Man the things has a broadband adapter, hard drive, and 4 controller ports. It's a shame that Japanese developers aren't helping MS, or else everyone could have bought an xbox and saved around $150 US on peripherals that the PS2 doesn't come with...

[ABCMan]

True the xbox has lots for your money, unfortunatly its selling like a dog that has rabies so m$ keep having to cut the price to try and shift it, the quality of the software just isnt there and no matter how many titles they pump out for it, it just isnt getting any better, there are some excellent looking titles on the xbox, sadly none of them have decent playability, it's sad but even the supposedly great halo is easily beaten by any number of current pc first person shooters, and has such an amazing lack of veriety in its scenery (only 4 or 5 level texturemaps) that you quickly get bored of seeing what looks ike the same levels over and over again, once you get beyond halo there is absolutle nothing currently on sale that is worth even buying.

The only thing that is selling xboxes is the modchips and the homebrew scene, at least under emulation it is possible to play (with varing degrees of success) playable games from the early arcades and older sega and nintendo consoles.

Its also worth pointing out the HUGE hit that m$ takes on every console it makes current costs are such that whilst nintendo gamecubes cost around $90 to get to retail the other two companies make a loss on each machine sold , sony's ps2 costs them around $180 at retail and microsoft are staring into the abyss with an at retail cost of $343 per unit, dont forget that is what it costs the companies to get a single unit to retail so the retail price includes both distributors profit and retailers profit which also have to be deducted from the retail price to work out the kind of hit these companies are taking (remove approx 25% from retail) so a $150 gamecube has an at retail cost to nintendo of $90 but $150-25% = $112.50 so nintendo make a profit of about $22.50 on each unit sold, now do the math for the xbox retail price =$199 - 25% = $149, cost at retail to m$ = $343 = M$ losing almost $200 on every console sold, now i realise that companies sell their hardware at a loss then recuop it over time with software sales but if you dont have software worth buying then how are you going to make a profit? m$ have plenty of money but how long will they continue to throw it at the xbox is unclear, it is common knowelege that they plan to bring xbox 2 to market by the end of 2003 which would make the xbox the shortest lived, worse buy console to ever hit the market at any price.

ABCMan

[ABCMan]

oh, i forgot to mention, both nintendo and sony can use economies of scale to reduce their costs over time wheras microsoft cant as it doesnt actualy produce the thing but buys in the parts from different manufacturers, so its very hard to see where ms could make any cost savings (except by fitting even cheaper dvd units and if its at all possible something worse than the ****ty segate hard drives the xbox already uses)

its also worth pointing out that with both sony and nintendo consoles if any of your add on units fails you can still play on your console, wheras if your hard drive fails in your xbox you are totaly screwed unless you wiped your guarantee and fitted a chip and a new hard drive in which case you have only lost all your game saves for every game you ever owned and all your online stats and settings (maybe its not such a good idea to store important info on an easily damaged hard drive)

[VIPER_1069]

seems to be an on going trend to get the cheapest console out just before christmas lol i remeber this a while back with xbox dropping the price to compete with G CUBE japan prices lol

[ABCMan]

its too soon for xmas cuts, they usualy come in the 3 weeks prior to xmas, not in the school summer holidays. this is something else, turns out it was started by sony so i guess they have seen their sales declining, microsoft have to match it as they are getting screwed anyway, nintendo are the odd ones, they have strong sales and are still turning a profit on their hardware.

[prime]

well Xbox is getting slaughtered by PS2, and it is clear that PS2 has already won the console war.

HOWEVER, Xbox is selling EXTERMELY well in the US.
Also, I think MS is positioning itself well for the next round of console wars (and positioning itself well I might add since they are learning some hard lessons like "software sells systems). MS should have really gotten some exclusives like Konami releasing Metal Gear Solid and Winning Eleven on Xbox only, etc.

I see the Gamecube being Nintendo's last hardware hurrah, since it isn't selling welll and they probably look at Sega's success and think that might be the best thing to do.

Are you sure about a new Xbox at the end of 2003?
I could see 2004, but 2003 seems WAY to early since the Xbox doesn't have any huge weaknesses other than lack of software...

Sony would seem the one's that could really use a new system, preferably one that integrates a hard drive and broad band adapter into one package.

[t0ucan]

Originally posted by joripe
ABC in short Billy boy has F*****d up. Luv it

to true Sony will win this battle im happy to say

[corky100]

Thanx ABCMan.
I visit the Reebok Stadium Regularly (Can you guess why? LOL!)

I might just check that one out.

[ABCMan]

anyone who thinks xbox is selling well is fooling themselves i'm afraid, week on week its sales are falling, with only the occasional better week brought about by price cuts or the release of a new modchip, the ps2 is still selling like hotcakes and is miles ahead, the gamecube is shifting bucketloads of units and is heading for an easy second place. in europe gc pre orders were higher than xbox total sales and that has continued, in the far east the xbox barely exists (one large online shop had two preorders), in america the xbox is doing better, but its sales are still falling in comparison to the two main players in this battle (sony and nintendo)

[DREEMTHEEF]

A number of factors decide whether or not a console sells...

Apart from cost...
Ease of modifying, i.e. chipability.
Games.

Not matter how high the spec's of a console if the games are of a low standard (graphics, sound, playability, able to be completed in 3 days....etc) then the console won't sell.


Example:

"....Yeah it's got a 2000Mhz processor, 1Gb of memory, 256Mb graphics system and full dolby surround sound...oh and a broadband internet connection...oh and I can connect it to my 32 inch wide screen TV....cool eh??"

"So what games do you have for it??"

"....er, well.....I can play Tetris!!"


Just my 2 cents worth.



....DreeM