Black Friday 360 Prices?

[guitarmas]

I don' t know if this is true or just made up, but a guy at work informed me that the X-Box 360 will go on sale the Friday after Thanksgiving. He said the premium system will go for $275 and the base(?) will go for $200. Like I said, I have no idea if this is true or not but I thought I would give you all a heads up.

[Gabriel]

If it's true, I have to admit that would be pretty sweet.

[+remowilliams]

There's no way they're going for a $125 price cut.

 

I heard the Easter Bunny is coming to town too!

[ninjarabbit]

Yeah onlt if Microsoft decided that they wanted to lose even more money on hardware sales. Isn't Microsoft already taking a $100+ hit on every hardware unit sold.

[Treasure-Diver]

I've been mulling over buying a 360, and a $50 or so price cut would do the trick.

[Gabriel]

I've been mulling over buying a 360, and a $50 or so price cut would do the trick.

 

It's just now beginning to get some attractive games. More or less, this Christmas is the launch and next year the 360 will either shape up to be a console to have or turn into another XBox 1.

 

Currently looking forward to: Space Giraffe, Afterburner, Magna Carta

[sega saturn x]

MS said not 3 months ago there would be no price cuts.

[MCHufnagel]

I don't believe that MS will cut the Xbox 360's prices. I think just a $25 cut on the core model would cut into Wii's sales. And a larger hard drive on the premium would take some of the luster off of the PS3. But like it's been said before, MS doesn't need to do either. The system already has quite a few games out and better games are on the way. They'll just try to recoup development costs as long as they can. I can't really blame them though, they're in the drivers seat for now. If they can get the 10 million units sold by this Christmas like they want, this generation could have a new winner.

[Scumdogg]

Heh, as much as i don't buy this tale of massive price cuts, it wouldn't surprise me. For you see, the wife and i recently caved and purchased a 360 to get us through the dark times until a Wii becomes readily available. So, i have to say if they do cut the price, i am absolutely certain that they would do it immediately after i purchased the system at full price.

 

But yeah...no real reason to cut the price on a system that's still selling well...not until after this christmas at least. Maybe next year.

[moycon]

From what I've heard Wal Mart is offering a game with your Premium 360 purchase, either Burnout Revenge or MotoGP

[BydoEmpire]

I got an email from Microcenter - they're offering a $100 rebate on both the Premium and Core 360's. $299 for a Premium is a pretty sweet deal.

[spacecadet]

$275 is not a price point any console will ever be offered at. Even the more retail-ish $274.99 just doesn't have that ring to it. Console prices are always even numbers, minus a cent. $269.99 I could see for the Core, or $249.99. No way the Premium is dropping that much.

 

If you visit Fatwallet, there are a lot of stores already doing discounts of various sorts. That usually portends a price drop, because console prices are set by the manufacturer. So if a store does a discount, it's because they know they'll get that money back (manufacturers usually give refunds to stores on price drops, because it otherwise wouldn't be very fair of them to charge, say, $290 wholesale and then force a drop in price on that purchased stock to $249).

 

I think MS *has to* drop the price on the 360 this year in order to compete. They've been stuck in the 220,000 unit range per month all year long - which is lower than they had forecast - and it's not going to get any better with the PS3 and Wii now on the market, whatever you think of those systems. The market is now split three ways, whoever ends up coming out on top. It's not going to mean more sales for MS in the short term, that's for sure.

 

How far they drop it is a different question - I don't think the $275 for the Premium mentioned is reasonable, but $349 might be. $349 and $249 sounds right.

[+Cobra Kai]

I just bought a 360 premium for the standard $399 at Target tonight. It did come with a free copy of Ghost Recon: AW though, $40 value. Got Gears of War too

[eric_ruck]

Analysts seem to think that Microsoft is close to breaking even on the 360 hardware now, or at least even on the premium system. Most predict the core system runs at about $50 loss. That doesn't count promotions.

 

Microsoft isn't talking specifics but they say they are ahead of their schedule for getting the manufacture price down for the system. They also say that the hardware will be "price neutral" for the life of the system, which means they expect that the profits on the hardware at the end of life will erase the debits at the beginning of the life. Add that to a very high attach rate and Microsoft will actually make money from the XBox. It's not like they don't know what they're doing.

 

There's also anecdotal evidence that people are already buying 360s because they've given up on trying to score a Wii or PS3 this season. So this time around might actually be a winner for them, regardless of their relative sales position against Sony and Nintendo. Oddly, Sony's price per unit is so ridiculous that even if they win the market share war, they may never be able to make money off the PS3.

 

Eric