Microsoft officially slashes Xbox 360 prices in Europe

We're getting reports that the rumored Xbox 360 price cuts for the UK have gone official. After our exclusive peak (pictured above) at the Woolworth's catalog, Microsoft has stepped up and slashed prices across the board for the Queen's own population of punters, boffins, and geezers. Starting Friday, the pricing drops to £130 for the Arcade, £170 for the 60GB Premium console, and £230 for the 120GB Elite.

Update: The rest of Europe too: Arcade (€180), Premium (€240), and Elite (€300).

[Via Gadgetoid]

[toxicpiano @ Sep 16th 2008 3:44AM]

60gb memory? maybe they mean storage space, or am I not in with the terms crowd anymore?

[ybd @ Sep 16th 2008 4:01AM]

Before idiots low rank you, yes - it's HDD space.

[Chris @ Sep 16th 2008 7:35AM]

I take it your refering to the ad there. I suppose people are getting used to the term memory since 'we' deal with 'Memory Cards' on a daily basis, but yeah, its not right.

[L.M.L.Y.P @ Sep 16th 2008 3:48AM]

incoming Jubei " me too " comments . guessing he'll say they copied Apple's hd gaemin' device coming out in the near future.

[Hellios @ Sep 16th 2008 3:49AM]

Oh wow, the Premium 60gb edition costs less than the Wii, I should really read some Xbox modding guides, to see if the currently-on-sale versions are moddable...

[aMac @ Sep 16th 2008 3:53AM]

As much as I hate Microsoft for bringing tiered products to the console market and having a base model with no hard drive, thereby screwing developers by not having a uniform platform to develop for, £130 is nothing to sniff at for people still on the fence or without the disposable income.

I have friends who like plenty of current-gen games but can't afford to justify buying a system who might be tempted to pick up the Arcade at least.

[Phil @ Sep 16th 2008 4:18AM]

I don't think the lack of a hard drive really does screw developers. Additionally with the name and marketing direction of the "Arcade" Xbox 360 it's safe to assume that a great deal of people owning the lowest priced, most casual SKU in the Xbox 360 line-up are probably not going to give a monkeys about a hard-disk requiring MMORPG. And if they really see it as a problem? They'll just release for the PS3 instead.

It's safe to say that the Premium will hit £160 as some retailers pretty soon, and if it does stay at the full, new price then it'll surely get some worth while bundle deals. People buying the Arcade are either broke, dare I say stupid, or just casual gamers.

Quite a few people I know are inexplicably ditching their Xbox 360s for PS3s now- Microsoft can drop their prices all they want, but unless they stop spouting the "We're making a games console" horse shit and pander to the people who want a well rounded multimedia device it's not going to gain them much ground. That said, anyone buying a PS3 for the Blu-ray player and media capabilities isn't going to be buying a lot of games. Microsoft don't want those sort!

And therein lies the trouble. I can cry about the functionality I want in the Xbox 360 for the rest of my life, but at the end of the day Microsoft are selling games, not a games console, so they don't give a monkeys about any functionality you might want that doesn't directly relate to you buying something from them.

Anyway! Topically wavering rant over.

[aMac @ Sep 16th 2008 4:41AM]

Not being able to guarantee that the platform you're developing for has any form of storage at all, save for a paltry few megs on a memory card, has I'm sure affected many developers. That is a fairly big resource they can now not rely on.

I personally think 'Arcade' is a terrible name for the base SKU, as it implies the user might be using the console to purchase and download the cheaper and simpler Live Arcade titles instead of 60 bucks for a normal game, but are then hit with the fact that if they want to download more than a couple of games, they'll have to think about shelling out for a larger memory card. I get that the 'Arcade' name refers to the fact the base console is geared towards games rather than a media player, but still.

Also, I'm not going to get into a war about why people should or should not get a certain console over another. Its been done.

[Brian @ Sep 16th 2008 4:03AM]

This is good but come on Microsoft, slash the price off the HDD (mainly the 60GB)

[SuperDre @ Sep 16th 2008 4:28AM]

Well, it seems we living in the Benelux (Belgium, Netherlands, Luxembourg) have even more luck, there is a rebate, which makes the arcade 149 euro, Premium 199 euro and the elite 249 euro.. those are respectable prices, only if there were interesting games for me I would even consider buying the elite... hell I might even buy it anyway just for the fun of it...

[Stefan @ Sep 16th 2008 4:58AM]

May i ask you where you got this information from?
(not that I don't believe you btw. :-) )

[Will H. @ Sep 16th 2008 4:50AM]

What about the prices in Australia?

[Dave Chappelle @ Sep 16th 2008 5:43AM]

Dude, lets first of all work on getting the Elite's here.

Come on man one step at a time.



-- oh wait a minute. i do not even want an xbox. ahahahahah

[J. Baker @ Sep 16th 2008 4:55AM]

That arcade is a Wii beater this Christmas.

[J. Baker @ Sep 16th 2008 4:59AM]

Hell, even the premium will give the Wii a run for its money.

[Fizzl @ Sep 16th 2008 5:31AM]

What holds me back most from getting and xbox is the controller. What I would love to see is a 360 expansion card or software for my PC so I could use it with a keyboard, mouse and have it run in a vista window.

[Dave @ Sep 16th 2008 5:52AM]

I can't help but notice that the UK have it a little better than (most of) the rest of the EU

£130 = €165
£170 = €215
£230 = €290

So 'savings' of €15 / €25 / €10 for those in the UK

[Alastair @ Sep 16th 2008 6:19AM]

£130 is pretty cheap for a (relatively noisy) media center extender if somebody wants to use it just for that.

[Nick @ Sep 16th 2008 8:54AM]

The noise comes from the DVD drive. You fail

[cesium @ Sep 16th 2008 10:34AM]

Apparently the new batches are significantly quieter than the old ones

[john paul @ Sep 17th 2008 9:12PM]

The noise does come from the DVD drive, not the media extender