Are you waiting for the Xbox 360 price drop?

By Spencer . June 27, 2006 . 11:30am

The official blog from the Microsoft employees stated that the Xbox 360 price drop rumor is merely a rumor. This isn’t too surprising since no company would point to a price drop in the near future, you know it might hurt sales. What is interesting are the reasons that John Pocoro, from the Xbox marketing department, to buy an Xbox 360 now.

“Think of all those long, lonely days between now and whenever that you could be playing Oblivion, GRAW, COD2, Fight Night 3, PGR3, and all those Xbox Live Arcade games everyone’s raving about (with even more on the way), all in hi-def. And there are more great games coming in the weeks ahead, including LOTR BFME II, Chrome Hounds, Dead Rising, and Madden NFL 07. Besides that, think of all those gamerscore points you’re not accumulating while you put off the purchase. You could hit 10,000 points before your friends pick up their Xbox 360! “

Whatever happened to Ninety-Nine Nights, Street Fighter II: Hyper Fighting, Enchanted Arms and Saint’s Row which are all coming out this summer? And more importantly what do YOU guys think? Are these reasons good enough reasons to pony up the cash for an Xbox 360 this summer?

TAGS: Microsoft, Rumors, Sega, Xbox 360

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One Response to “Are you waiting for the Xbox 360 price drop?”

Yogizilla Says:
March 21st, 2007 at 5:46 pm

Great piece. Very direct and it provides a non-fanboy opinion for once. You are on the money about the simple fact that no company would admit to a price drop unless it was right around the corner (in two or three weeks TOPS). They want to move product NOW so creating the urgency by way of this sort of hype works, for the typical, easily-convinced consumer, that is.

Really, none of those titles really create urgency for me, personally, but I am a jaded gamer since I design games myself and have played just about everything under the sun. Those are all “old hat” to me. I know that I am not the only one that finds the next-gen library lacking for all systems right now but XBox 360 has less of an excuse since it’s been out a while. Personally, I haven’t met too many gamers that really care about racking up gamer points.

I believe what Microsoft should focus on is their biggest strength: multiplayer gaming. They need to find ways to deliver more value there and bring apps that treat multiplayer as a core feature, not an after-thought. All these cutesy-wootsy little features are great for the aggressive, super-competitive gamers but not everyone really cares about bragging rights. Gamers today, especially XBox owners, are much more educated consumers and they want to see ROI when they put the big bucks forther.

With backwards compatibility issues still being a real bugger and the Zephyr in the works, Microsoft should really look at moving existing units. As a store owner, I would not be interested in heavily stocking up on 360’s at this time when there are other products that will move faster. Sony, for example, has the right idea: they are still supporting the PS2 hardcore while making building bridges into the PS3 market. Dropping the price on the PS2 (in Japan) is a brilliant move for Sony and I hope Microsoft borrows some of those pages from their success notebook, rather than just trying to think about aesthetics.

Based upon the readers and fellow gamers I know, I can say that most people need more than some buzzwords, hype, and fancy graphics to impress them. There’s too much noise in marketing. We need to see real value delivered!