TrustedReviews is following up on their earlier rumor of a new 60GB Xbox 360 model claiming that, after some evident equivocation, Microsoft is finally ready to announce it at E3 and release it as early as this August (pre-10th says their source). No information on how the larger hard drive would affect other SKUs – would the Arcade get a hard drive or would the Elite get bumped up? – but that's the way these things are.
Second rumor regards a possible pricedrop to be delivered at E3 this year. Following last week's NPD data showing a slight dip in monthly 360 sales, EEDAR analyst Jesse Divnich said, "With E3 around the corner, we can expect Microsoft to make some type of announcement regarding a hardware price cut, the introductory of a new hardware SKU with new features, or both." Both sounds best here. How about a new, cheaper 60GB model?
[Via Engadget]
Source – 60GB Xbox 360 To Launch At E3
Source – Microsoft to cut US Xbox 360 price at E3, says analyst
(Page 1) Reader Comments
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They should start at 120GB and give you the option to go 160GB or 250GB.
C'mon, a 160GB SATA 2.5" drive can be had for $75.
Must be the plastic case around the 120GB drive that makes it so EXPENSIVE.
Why hasn't Nintendo released a HD yet? At the price they feel would be reasonable, that would put a Wii + HD over the price of a 360. They don't want that kind of back lash. Plus, 20GB drives are getting hard to fine. Drives get bigger, but they don't go down in price. Memory cards do, which means more margin.
and for all those that wanna give me shit saying "hard disk drives never give you the advertised space on the box after formatting"...yes, this is true...and look on the HDD on your comp, you lose 7% not 35
I'd argue that. Only a couple years ago, a 250Gb would've run you at least £200. You can get that for well under £100 now, prolly £50 if you hunt for it. £200 can get you 2 Tb in the right places now.
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I want more DLC, but am running very low on space.
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As far as the arcade, I don’t see why people bitch about it. It’s an option for one w/out a HD if people want that. I don’t understand why people think its existence somehow makes the other versions prices so much higher. Did anyone see a report that said that? Or is this just some clever reverse math work plus a whole lot of assumptions.
I really need to keep up with X360 news & X360Fanboy a little better. :\
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Seriously, they should be charging about $50 for a 60GB HDD, and they would sell a kagillion of them.
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Producing 60GB drives instead of 20GB drives will probably not cost MS anymore than they are currently paying. In fact, it may actually cost MS more to continue using 20GB drive because hard drive manufacturers don't typically manufacture 20GB hard drives anymore. That's also a reason why the 20GB drive would not be added to the Arcade. If they were to add the hard drive to the Arcade unit, it would basically cost just as much as the Premium to manufacture but they would continue to sell it at the lower price, which makes no sense for MS.
I say 20GB HDD=RIP, 60GB=$49.99, 120GB=$99.99 and people would be somewhat happy with the not-as-overpriced-but-still-high prices
It looks like they're gonna drop the price now, and then Sony will drop theirs around the holidays when many more people are looking to buy a new console...
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Seriously, if your sales are looking flat and not really growing while competing in a market with two other really good competitors you want to keep up the pressure on those competitors. You want to make decisions that your competitors have to react to. You don’t want to play “me too” and be forced to make decisions you're not ready to take.
Of course a price drop, unless it's to $250.00 won't really stop the Wii. I don’t think anything will stop the hype wagon. It’s the must have item even if some people don't know why they are buying one. However, dropping the price of the 360 might force Sony to match and extend their money losing ways for another 6 months.
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If there's a new model I will forever dub this "The Generation Of SKUs"
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I don't have a major problem with a bunch of SKUs as long as they're all fundamentally the same. This is where Microsoft and Sony both fail. The lack of hard drive in the Arcade and lack of backwards compatibility in the 40gig are fairly important missing features that the average joe is not going to know about until it's too late.
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As far as the Arcade, it should have come with a hard drive all along. I seriously hope Microsoft corrects that someday.
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And the 3 year warranty is great for me now as I don't care if I can't play for a while, I just fear what will happen in 10 years when my 360 inevitably red rings again and I have no warranty for it.
It takes 1 to 2 weeks MAX. My friend sent his in on a Tuesday and got it back that next week on Thurday. Same deal with another buddy of mine.
On original hardware.
I will not be able to say that about the 360 ten years from now.
A three year warranty on something guaranteed to break is basically Micosoft telling you the new xbox will be out in 3 years, so buy that once your 360 catches fire. It will be sorta backwards compatible too.
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...but not until we know where the 4th game from Platinum is going.
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I mean come one, $350 for the 360 with 20GB hdd when the PS3 is $400 with 40GB, built in wifi, included rechargable battery and charge (USB) cable, and ability to play Blu-ray? The Xbox360 came out first and I thought that MSFT was committed to a price advantage to maintain market share. The PS3, for a very long time, has been a MUCH better deal hardware wise.
Which is why yesterday I took up wal-mart's offer of a $100 gift certificate with the purchase of any Blu-ray player (including PS3). Picked up the 40GB sku, and with the gift card bought component cables and Planet Earth and 300 on Blu-ray.
I think people underestimate how attractive the Blu-ray feature can be for people who have HDTVs, especially a relatively large one (maybe over 42"). On big HDTVs, DVDs simply look shitty compared to your HD digital cable feed and its really frustrating. I finally got fed up trying to watch Planet Earth on DVD on my family's 61" DLP and went and bought the PS3 lol.
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However, I'll also definitely enjoy some PS3 exclusives like MGS4, God of War III, and the Resistence series, and in the end for $400 its as cheap as the cheapest Blu-ray players and better than most of those cheapest ones too (some of them can only output 720p, and almost all of them are much slower at loading than the PS3). After you've spent a lot of money on an HDTV it kind of doesn't make sense not to have a Blu-ray player. It would be like buying the new iPhone and not paying the $10/month for 3G internet access, or buying a new car and not spending the money on... gas or something.
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