Xbox 360 Elite to hit Japan in October... for $390

While many Americans have simply been trying to find the ebony Xbox 360 in stock, Microsoft has been making plans to hold its breath and launch the special edition console in Japan. If you've noticed, Microsoft has had quite the time trying to convince the Japanese to actually give the standard Xbox 360 a shot, but apparently there's hope that (yet another) flashy bundle will drum up business. Of course, the obvious standout here is the launch price, which will drop in at some $89 below what we Americans are forced to pay. Still, the ¥47,800 ($390) sticker shouldn't take anyone by surprise, as Microsoft already introduced the Xbox 360 Core system to this same market for a lesser price than that seen in North America. Anywho, for those interested (and living in Japan), be sure to mark you calendars for October 11th, capiche?

[Via Joystiq]

[brad @ Jul 5th 2007 2:20PM]

PLease bring that same price drop to the US, please MS, it been a 1.5 yrs and no price drop yet...give us some love, heck were the ones buying most of the consoles

[Marcin @ Jul 5th 2007 2:28PM]

Is this flag meant to look like "red ring of death"? :)

[JAmerican @ Jul 5th 2007 2:41PM]

That's the reason the price doesn't drop. If there is a demand, why would you lower prices. If there is little to no demand (like in Japan) then you have to lower prices to make the product more favorable to the consumers. Anyone would pick up a $50 Xbox 360 that was new in box even if they hated the system.

JA

[Alan Partridge @ Jul 5th 2007 3:54PM]

What the hell are you guys complaining about, the Xbox 360 premium costs $530 in the UK!

[sr @ Jul 6th 2007 2:50AM]

Seriously, I would get one tomorrow at $390. I can't justify paying launch prices for a 1.5 year old console no matter how good it is.

[ssuk @ Jul 6th 2007 5:55AM]

So, Japanese Elite... £194. United Kingdom Core... £199...

Does anyone else feel just a LITTLE pissed off by that?

[booyaka @ Jul 5th 2007 2:26PM]

They're really not that hard to find here in Houston, atleast in my area. I've seen them 4 times at Wal-mart.

[Rolim @ Jul 5th 2007 2:34PM]

Anyone going to Japan in october?? let me know!!
till then i´ll keep watching the video teaser LOL!!
http://www.weshow.com/us/videos/channel/show.action?channel=217

[Sy @ Jul 5th 2007 2:48PM]

At a 33% failure rate, can you blame the Japanese consumers for not biting? At least they have the sense to not support junk hardware ...unlike this country.

[gibber9583 @ Jul 5th 2007 3:16PM]

Can you provide concrete proof of 33% failure rate? No you cant. K thanks.

[Sy @ Jul 5th 2007 3:23PM]

“We had 35 Xbox 360s at launch I know more than half of them broke within the first six months (red lights or making circles under the game discs). Two of them were dead on arrival.” - said former EB Games employee Matthieu G.

A Best Buy associate who chose to remain anonymous claimed that the failure rate of the Microsoft Xbox 360 was in the ballpark of “between a quarter to a third” of the systems sold.

http://www.ripten.com/?p=374

[gibber9583 @ Jul 5th 2007 3:30PM]

See that is not concrete proof. Speculation.

[Josef F @ Jul 5th 2007 3:36PM]

Sy, you lost me at "a Best Buy associate"

[stephenbratz @ Jul 5th 2007 3:55PM]

I know a friend, who has a neighbor, who has a cousin, who has a brother that once walked into a EB games. There was somebody there returning a PS3 because of problems. Since he did not see any PS3s being sold, that is an infinite number of all PS3s being returned (1/0 == infinity or NaN). Therefore all PS3s are defective.

Relying upon one ***former*** employee for stats (did he do a complete statistical analysis of return rates?) is very similar to what I wrote above. I remember somebody making a post to an engadget like site (it could have been Engadget, but I am not sure) saying that he walked into a Circuit City two days after the 360 release, and said that he counted X number of people returning their 360, and there were X+5 total 360s sold at that store on release day (where X was around 30), all because of problems. First, the odds of all those people being there at the same exact time, on the same exact day, all having problems made it, obviously, unbelievable - 86% of all people there at the same time returning their 360? This seems like the same thing, some random employee knows the stats of all returns for the entire chain? Second, why is this a ***former*** employee? If we are just going to throw out what seems like made up evidence, I say that this employee left all the 360s out in the rain, then dropped them off the truck, kicked them a bit, and then pissed all over them. When they were sold, they came back because they no longer worked. He was caught doing this, and was fired. With the "It can't be my fault, it has to be somebody else" attitude that many people have, he just blamed the 360s, not him. Or maybe, just maybe, he is a PS3 fanboy that is making up numbers so that his favorite console wins. And while we are making stuff up, maybe it is a Sony employee that said that to try and sell at least a few PS3s.

The result is, if you believe everything you read on the internet simply because somebody wrote it without any proof whatsoever, and without being able to challenge the person making the claim, I am selling the domain name www.google.com. And cheap, contact me if you are willing to buy.

[PA @ Jul 5th 2007 11:16PM]

YOUR RIGHT it's everywhere, on consumer television shows and so on... PROOF :

http://www.dailytech.com/article.aspx?newsid=7892
http://www.gwn.com/news/story.php/id/13201/Retailers_Claim_360_Failure_Rate_Is_Over_30.html

I hope this time I will not get a MS employee asking me for further proof ;-)

[Matt B @ Jul 5th 2007 2:56PM]

47,800 yen to them still feels like $479 to Americans. It's still a nice chunk of change even if the conversion doesn't make it seem like it is.

[sr @ Jul 6th 2007 2:56AM]

You're right, their weak currency isn't really helping them. It's pretty bad that the Yen is weak against the dollar when the dollar is weak against everything else these days.

[Craig Butrick @ Jul 5th 2007 2:59PM]

If you look at the picture you see it already comes with the red ring of death....

--Craig

[aZTEKv2 @ Jul 5th 2007 4:19PM]

im sure your being sarcastic, but for others the red dot surrounded by the white is the flag of Japan. ^^

[Billy @ Jul 5th 2007 3:11PM]

I love my 360, but M$ should just give up on the Japanese market. They don't like American stuff, and that's not going to change because of a slight price drop. How much money do you think they've lost from trying to make the 360 a success in Japan? $100 million? Imagine if they instead invested that money in the US 360 market, or took a $100 million loss from dropping the price of the US 360. The audience that likes them would be much happier, and the audience that doens't give a crap about them would be the exact same as they are now.

[Paul @ Jul 5th 2007 5:36PM]

I agree with Billy. No matter what MS does, the 360 will never be a big hit in Japan. They should have just given up early and used the saved money for the markets that will ACTUALLY buy the 360 products.

[Jon Acheson @ Jul 5th 2007 11:28PM]

Nonsense, there are tons of American products that do very well in Japan: Apple computers and iPods, Coke, KFC, McDonald's, as well as music, TV and movies.

I would guess it's more that the Japanese public doesn't like the game selection on the 360. That and the fact that the 360's reliability issues were already public knowledge at the time of the Japanese launch.

[loci @ Jul 5th 2007 3:13PM]

"While many Americans have simply been trying to find the ebony Xbox 360 in stock"

ive simply been trying to find a normal one that doesn't break after 3 months

[Gavin @ Jul 5th 2007 3:25PM]

...and for us Europeans and our region friends in Australasia? MS have totally missed the boat not releasing the Elite to these markets. I would have snapped up an Elite last April, but too late - I shall be looking to swap out my 360 for a PS3 next year.

[RegionFreeKB @ Jul 5th 2007 4:06PM]

The words of Sam Tramiel: "That's called dumping, and it's ILLEGAL!"

:P

[Arnie @ Jul 5th 2007 5:18PM]

Has anybody seen the Open Letter from Alan Moore on xbox.com. 2 More years of warranty yipee!!!

[Anonymous @ Jul 5th 2007 9:50PM]

You mean peter moore. Alan moore is a comicbook writer.

[Arnie @ Jul 5th 2007 11:18PM]

You are right.Lol
That was embarrassing.

[PSPlay @ Jul 5th 2007 5:23PM]

My point proven again (see DS Camera). Japan just likes to wave all of its Japanese goodness in our American faces and says "CAN'T TOUCH THIS".

[Nova @ Jul 5th 2007 7:33PM]

All I can say is good lu..... damn, is microsoft crazy? I mean, xbox 1 was a big crash in japan and I supposed that they will never launch the 360 there.

[Peter Payne @ Jul 5th 2007 11:36PM]

Too bad Microsoft didn't like, remove the region encoding to encourage cross-importing of games. Too bad they didn't get a little less anal about the copy protection. They might actually have more than six customers in the whole country.

[Peter Payne @ Jul 5th 2007 11:36PM]

Too bad Microsoft didn't like, remove the region encoding to encourage cross-importing of games. Too bad they didn't get a little less anal about the copy protection. They might actually have more than six customers in the whole country.

[Ping Wang @ Jul 6th 2007 3:00PM]

I'm male 20 something...and I don't have a 360.