Rumor: No price drop for Elite or Arcade?

When are the good chipsets coming? Then I'll buy another. I think we would have heard rumblings of drops for the other skus by now.

My guess is a clearing of stock before the 60 gig version and jasper revision hit shelves in the coming months. I'd assume they produce far more pro's than other versions and they need to be moved asap.

I think its a terrible mistake to not have a true price drop. Sure its going to be great for the people who get a 20G for only $300. But then they are right back in the same boat with a $350 unit as their "main" SKU. I do not see too many people who were not buying a 20G at $350 running out and buying a $60G unit for $350.

Actually I think the best unit to drop the price on is the Arcade. It really needs to get to $200 so start by getting it to $250 ASAP.

Yeah a Core Xbox360 system with a memory card could easily be sold at $200.00.
That would give them a huge boost.

Also, I wonder what will happen with the official hard drive pricing if this is true...

a "Live Starter Pack" for Arcade owners, which consists of a 60GB HDD, 3 Months of Live, a Headset, and an ethernet cable, all for $99.99

If they sell the 20g at $299 then who will buy the Arcade at $279 ... nobody . It will probably take a few months to sell out of the Pro's so maybe their plan is to saturate the market with Pro's and hold back production of the Arcade ? I think they will be announcing something at e3 regarding price drops across the board , a price drop is due from MS and Sony .

-- Jason

I dont think a price drop is due from Sony. They've been selling their system at a huge loss as it is to push Blu-Ray, and I know a lot of people who have been buying the system at $399 now that some good games are/have come out. Ive got 3 buddy's who all owned 360's recently bought PS3's now that MGS4 is out and some new games are on the horizon. The content has been the biggest issue.

The 360 on the other hand, I think is definitely due for a price drop if it wants to keep gathering more market share. There have been enough huge releases that most people who wanted one have gotten one. Until price comes down, I can't see them gaining much more market share.

I see logic for both sides of the price drop debate for Sony but if they want to hang in there with MS then they have to do something before Xmas 08 IMO . Not everyone is buying PS3's just because it has blu ray (well ok most are) , some are actually wanting to play games on the thing . I know several people that could care less about the blu ray feature for now , they are hardcore gamers that will snap up a PS3 in a second once the price hits $300 .

-- Jason

Yes. Unless they REALLY don't care about installed base. It'd be a significant shift in strategies - they launched early to be "#1" of course, but if they don't actually drop the price for real they are handing this generation back to Nintendo.

Agreed, Davio. Most of the customers that will have high attach rates have already bought into this gen. I mean, after GOW, Halo 3, COD 4, & GTA4 is there any serious gamer still on the fence?

I say no, not at this point. The people buying from here on out are unlikely to be people that will buy alot of titles.

Excellent point. We've really moved into a new market at this point. There is nothing "hard core" coming thats going to sway the "hard core" gamers that did not bite with those titles. The next gen of this gen is "cheap gamers" and they are not going to be buying titles in the quanitity the others have.

Um guys ... not all hardcore gamers have money to burn .

I know this is AVS but that is kind of an elitist logic that any hardcore gamer would have already bought a PS3 , I know several people that game daily that have not purchased a PS3 yet .

-- Jason

That may be more about not having TIME to burn! I have not bought a game in months, and still have not finished all the games I have (or collected some of the achievements I want).

360 to date has sold about 20 or 21 Million units. Wii has sold about 25.

PS2 has sold, to date, roughly 125 million units and is continuing to sell 10+ million a year. A vast majority of those systems were sold at <$200, I think Sony is happy to take those extra sales even with less money per system.

In any case, there is a LOT of room to grow here. Halo 3, CoD4, GTA4, etc. all sell to a specific audience that, yes, has already probably picked up a 360. That audience is a small fraction of gamers and not even close to every hardcore gamer. For example as an RPG system the PS3 and 360 are both quite pathetic. There are a lot of genres that need to be filled in and the price needs to go down.

To attract new people to buy the 360 they need to drop the price by a lot. Arcade $199, Pro $249 but Microsoft is not smart enough to see that and that's why they will end up 3rd again for this hardware generation.

I agree....gamers want to play games!!! I think the recent release of MGS4 along with some great titles coming in the future will cause a lot of people to buy into the PS3, even at $399. Blu-Ray is definitely not bringing new folks to the gaming market. There was an excellent article in this months Home Theater magazine about the state of Blu-Ray and how its getting near a tipping point. Average Joe just isnt buying into it yet for a variety of reasons (I still think the price of the disks is just ridiculous, I havent bought one in months for specifically the price...no more war has meant no more discounts). Anyways, games are where its at.

I think a $50-$100 price cut alongside the release of Gears of War 2 would be gold for MS.

Now that I think of it, Im really curious to see what kind of effect Halo Wars has on the system. The biggest franchise for MS that now ties together a completely different genre. I know personally I hate RPG's but just because its in the Halo world Im tempted to try it.

@ Jason -

I guess we're speaking past each other with our definition of what constitutes a hardcore gamer. In my mind, it's someone who both buys and plays a lot of different games, not necessarily someone who games with great frequency.

Someone who plays COD4 exclusively, but plays it alot, might be considered a hardcore gamer (hi FIVE ONE SIX !!! ) but they aren't a good customer and aren't the type of customer Sony and M$ are after.

So my response would be, the "hardcore" gamers that you reference who can't afford a $300+ console probably can't afford more than a couple of titles a year either. I'd lump Frank's "cheap" gamers together with your "hardcore w/o means" gamers for s/w sales forecasting purposes.

Pretty sure Halo Wars is an RTS, but I agree with your basic sentiment, they're clearly hoping to jumpstart rts on the console by slapping the coveted Halo name on it.

The other thing that isn't being mentioned is this: there is absolutely zero discussion of lowering the MSRP $60 price on new s/w titles.

Yea, that's not gonna happen. For one thing, that price is not unheard of in gaming history (prices for PSX/PS2 were really low, I remember scraping together $70+ for certain SNES and many N64 carts), and for another people are going to want to buy games for their new console.

But if they're having trouble affording a $300 console, just how many $60 titles are they going to buy a year?

Methinks not very many. More likely, they buy cheaper, used titles which does nothing for Sony or Microsoft.

I agree. Almost all my gaming friends have 360's because they launched first and for Halo, but only one of them has a PS3, which he bought for MGS4.

Well, they aren't going to buy the $300 console in the first place. $200 console is another story.

Not really , you are overlooking a common aspect of gaming ... impulse buying . While some might not be able to buy a PS3 @ $400 at any given moment they do have enough dough to grab a $50-$60 game fairly often (probably at least once a month) . Some people just have a hard time saving money but that does not mean they are not hardcore gamers . I am hardcore by your absolute definition but those same friends of mine that are waiting for a PS3 price drop buy more 360 games than I do . I hardly think MS or Sony don't care about gamers that only buy a handful of games per year as they are more than likely the majority .

I do agree that there can be different definitions of 'hardcore' however .

-- Jason

handing it back? nintendo has it already.

maybe handing it to sony......

I'm still not with you, Pimp. My hypothesis is there are very few gamers that will have high attach rates (my definition of "hardcore") that have yet to buy either a PS3 or a 360 (no, I don't consider the Wii next-gen).

I'm not talking about people that have already made the jump into next-gen and have yet to purchase the other console, because there will be very few people that own both a 360 and PS3 at this point.

I'm talking about the people sitting out there with 180's and PS2's still on the sidelines. I just don't believe that when and if these individuals purchase a 360 or PS3 that they will buy very many software titles, not at $60 a pop.

But to your impulse buy argument, if you've got upwards of $720/yr to spend on titles alone ($60 x 12), not counting any dlc or accessories, then I have a hard time accepting you don't have the money for either a PS3 or a 360. I mean, you can finance it interest-free @ BB or CC anywhere from 6-18 months depending on the current promo if you had to. And if you're "hardcore" wouldn't you do that?

That being said, it's interesting that 3 of the top 10 best selling s/w titles of last year were PS2 games, so maybe I'm wrong:

Best Selling Software of 2007 (NPD data)
1. Halo 3 (Xbox 360) -- 4.82 million
2. Wii Play w/ remote (Wii) -- 4.12 million
3. Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare (Xbox 360) -- 3.04 million
4. Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock (PlayStation 2) -- 2.72 million
5. Super Mario Galaxy (Wii) -- 2.52 million
6. Pokemon Diamond (Nintendo DS) -- 2.48 million
7. Madden NFL 08 (PlayStation 2) -- 1.90 million
8. Guitar Hero 2 (PlayStation 2) -- 1.89 million
9. Assassin's Creed (Xbox 360) -- 1.87 million
10. Mario Party 8 (Wii) -- 1.82 million

Interesting though how the 360 totals out of this top 10 list (9.73M) dwarf the PS2 (6.51M) given the relative install bases.

Ah , yeah we are both talking about different groups of prospective buyers .

-- Jason

Well it's not a rumor it's official, i've seen the ad. 20gig will be 299 starting sunday.