You may have seen a post or three (or eleventy) over the past few days about Sony's newer, skinnier, cheaper
PS3 Slim. Microsoft apparently did, and that might be partly why it chose to delay its own
re-pricing announcement, a move it was apparently set to reveal yesterday at GamesCom -- but opted not to. Big Redmond is said to be killing off the Xbox 360 Pro and replacing it with the Elite at the $299 price point, a move it will want to make quickly because, for the first time, it's now the most expensive gaming console on store shelves. Whether the supposed delay was to let the dust settle on Sony's big news or was just to clear out some additional Pro inventory remains to be seen, but either way MS had better get a move on -- and maybe think about knocking an extra couple bucks off for good measure.
[Via
1UP; thanks, jeremy23j]
posted Aug 20th 2009 9:43AM
xbox360 slim?
THINK OF THE HEAT! THINK OF THE HEAT!
I don't think the XBOX 360 can be slimmed down. MS isn't a big fan of small cases (XBOX slim never happened.)
But then the power brick would be the same size as the actual console.
On a serious note the 360 is already a nice size.
With a built in power supply? PLZ! Crap hardware tech!
And how about adding that elusive blueray drive while your at it!
The PS3 Slim is almost as the same size as the Xbox 360 when it's on vertical position
is there a study that says making something more slim improves hardware performance? Why all the giddiness over slim ps3?
No but theres a study that says they sell more. Plus they use less power etc...
Enough of console slims... where is the Xbox portable gaming device? come on MS..up the game a bit. the PSP has no competitor (the DS you say?... that garners to a different demographic IMO) for that reason Sony has been lazy as hell.
I want a portable gaming machine with nuclear fusion processor and after burners!
Microsoft can keep the Xbox 360 at the same size but for the sake of the children, make it quiet.
Certainly the price needs to come down. But, make a 802.11n compatible adapter! I realize that it's not been standardized yet, but as far as I know the draft standard in use at this point is going to become the de facto standard for 802.11n, so come on, Microsoft! I already have 2 N routers, so let me throw my xbox on there also without using 802.11g!
OneLove: well, the $300 price point for one. slimming it down is more a marketing gimmick than anything, but a very effective one.
I think they should of just dropped the Arcade and made the Pro the $199 and the Elite $299 or $249. Would make more sense. Why put an old console the same price as a newer console?
Does anyone think it would be crazy to think that Sony might do another price break on the phat PS3 once the Slim starts going on sell? I think it would be hella sweet to see the system sit at $250 or less...they'd really push some systems then :)
"OneLove: well, the $300 price point for one. slimming it down is more a marketing gimmick than anything, but a very effective one."
Not at all. Well, I suppose it may be more attractive to consumers. But the whole point is that it greatly reduces manufacturing cost.
Who cares really. I can't wait to get a PS3 Slim. wewt.
On a side note the PS3 is now the best deal for a console in terms of price. Given that I need to pay to play games online with 360, and buy a WiFi card, and rechargeable batteries for controllers, etc. PS3 comes with it all. PS2 was the shit, and maybe PS3 will now be that way too. Either way I'm getting one.
at last they (engadget) put my tip to them
um obviously, they have the upper hand so they can wait and then easily counter anything sony does. sorry sony but its an uphill battle that you cant win.
I am an Xbox 360 fanboy, but I disagree with you statement, sir. I will most likey buy A PS3 for the Blu-Ray player.
this has nothing to do with what you individually will do or how well sony does in the home video market. im talking about the fact that in video games, sony will not be able to win. even if they sell an equal amount of consoles as microsoft, they both LOSE money on selling hardware.
SOFTWARE is where you make money and microsoft has them beat 10 to 1 there.
i dont care about the features of the consoles or which you like better or any of the bullshit. the statement i just made is true.
Here's an idea: Try lowering the price of that hard drive.
agreed! it's outrageous
YouTube Xbox HDD replacement- you can do a 120GB drive yourself for a little over $50 with a Western Digital BEVS drive.
I would never pay their outrageous price. Its like paying $150+ for 2GB more of RAM in a computer, when you can upgrade it yourself for $50. Doesn't make sense to me. And if you argue that everybody doesn't want to do it themselves or have the ability, it takes like two seconds and if you have internet, you have google.
Just sell cases and let us do our own hard drive replacements. What's the harm in that (besides the dent to your ego and your coffers)?
All the accessories really need a price cut.
The wireless adapter is a huge rip off, but not for why most of you are thinking. It's an 80211a/b/g adapter, and those are always pretty pricey, they're NOT just $10 a pop. But there aren't too many 11a routers (and they're pricey as well), so having an 11a adapter isnt much of an advantage. So MS should drop the 11a and offer a cheaper adapter... or go 11n if they ever finalize the spec.
Memory cards are way overpriced... I've seen the 512mb cards as low as $30 but that's still expensive. Bundled with Worms, it shouldn't be any more than $20, and really ought to be $5-10. And larger cards would be nice.
In the last two days, the price of the 120 Gig HD on Amazon has dropped from $135 to $120.
Consumers now demanding that MS reduce the price of the XBox and it's extras. Sony may have got it right afterall.
Yeah, $299 is way too expensive. They won't sell many!
WTH Engadget!? The Xbox 360 can be bought for less than the Wii or PS3 slim or not.
not a useful 360
What pubeless said. An Xbox 360 without a Hard Drive is a useless Xbox 360. Also of note, the amount of freakin add-on peripherals you need to get the featureset of the PS3 shoots the price through the roof. $100 for WiFi Adapter, $50 for online play, $150 for the friggin 120GB HDD separately, $20 for the play & charge controller cable.....they milk the hell out of their customers....and they're getting away with it.
If you look on Amazon you can get 13 months of live for $30. The wifi isn't required, but you can get them for about $60 as well. You also don't need a 120gig HD. You can pick up refurb 20gigs for about $25, and new 60gigs for $50.
Not everybody needs all that, whats the point of making the cost of the system go up? I dont own the wireless adapter. I dont have a 120 gig HDD. (20 and 60 are fine for me.) And live is 50 bucks a year big deal you pay probably twice that a month on your phone. Plus you get a free month of live.
"they milk the hell out of their customers"
That's what I feel like when I buy apple products and their "features" and accessories. That's why I only do for work. Not trying to start a war, just saying.
@ SlaterGS :: Yeah we know you're 'just saying' ... but why did you even mention Apple in the first place?
@Mr. Blue
Because they are the company that comes to mind and who I deal with that does that.... Have a better comparison? If you do that is fine, that is just my experience.
Charge kit, really? Thats the best that you guys can come up with? I love the anytime there is a 360 thread the PS3-kids start rattling off the 4 year Sony marketing / sales slick. Yeah its gotten Sony so far ahead of the competition thus far. For your charge kit how about just putting in some NiMH AAs and keep playing wirelessly, oh wait you cant do that with the PS1/2/3 controller. Just about everyone has NiMHs and a charger.
Wireless? overrated for a gaming console. I've had friends that used wireless and went back to a hard connection because they were running into issues with HD streaming and additional latency in gaming.
Used 360 HDs are super cheap online.
Here's an idea play the console that you want and let Sony push out the BS marketing specs. I love the one about how the PS3 was going to be 5X more powerful than the 360 LOL.
lothar: EVen if you can get them cheaper through amazon.....you're still missing the point. Who cares you can get the hard drives for half off on Amazon, Its still additional costs that the PS3 DOESNT Have at the same $299 pricepoint.....and Yes the charge kit is a must have in my book. The point is, the $299 PS3 is a great value now.
How about a link to the $30 13 month xbox live membership?
I don't understand why a harddrive is so necessary for the 360... I own an Arcade, and yeah, there have been times when I haven't been able to download a demo, but really it doesn't impede my usage of the 360 in any way that I care about. I use my 360 to *gasp* play games and as a Media Center Extender. The external 256MB memory card that came with it is more than enough for game saves. Yeah, I'd prefer it if they had included the harddrive, but at the end of the day it's no biggy. And no, my console has not RROD'd.
@Ian, Lothar
Some of your arguements verge on ridiculous. You're saying one could buy used, refurb accesories for the xbox cheaper. Well you want to know something I can but a used, refurb PS3 on the cheap online also. What a concept. So you could get a Hard drive of ebay for not much but in the same capacities as the ps3?
the big MS is trembling in fear of the mighty slim :)
Yea im sure they are... considering they still have the highest attach rate and the largest online community...
@ numerwan :: Not to mention the highest failure rate.
@ohsnapitstahj
I'm not sure the PS3 Slim will make Microsoft tremble but it will certainly make them sit-up and take notice as this now makes the PS3 much more of a player in the market. However, like everyone else, I rather suspect that Microsoft had been expecting Sony to drop the price much earlier and therefore I expect that they already have plans available on the action to take.
I don't use the wireless for a number of reasons:
1) A dropped connection while gaming is very frustrating.
2) As mentioned above I use my 360 as an Extender a lot (among other things for HD video), so 802.11g just doesn't cut it.
3) I haven't tried playing the 360 using wireless so I don't know if it would introduce significant lag, however on my computer the absence of lagspikes is very noticeable on ethernet when compared to WiFi (the average lag is about the same, but on WiFi I get lagspikes).
let's see they have a 56% failure rate.. so divide half the xbox 360's they've sold and then tell me who's in the lead??? I've read in numerous places that microsoft counts their replacements as sales..
What about these people that's on their 5th, 6th 360?
"I've read in numerous places that microsoft counts their replacements as sales.. "
You read wrong. That makes no sense. If they send you a unit on warranty it sure as hell cannot be listed in the books as a sale to a distributor/retailer. What you read is people making crap up to have fake arguments, like the one you are perpetuating now. Use a little common sense next time.
I'm sure everyone is aware of the famous Xbox's Red Ring Of Death!
No Xbox slim is coming, but a price drop for the Elite yes probably.
Either way, lets see how the tides go on Sept. 1st
My xbox 360 is plugged into my powerbook G4 and I play Halo over wifi with zero issues. Wifi is faster than my internet connection so I can't see the argument to not use it.
How about they include the damn wifi dongle with the console, and stop gimping the arcade with only 1080i.
I have an Arcade I put a hard drive on, and it does 1080p just fine. Someone is misinformed.
Key phrase, you paid a hundred bucks for a proprietary hard drive enclosure to get that 1080p, so you really have a pro that you assembled yourself. Great job there Stephen A. Douglas, that was some grade A argumentation.
The arcade comes with HDMI and 1080p.
Also, if you're using wifi for gaming, you're doing it wrong.
@CaramelZappa
Are you high? The Arcade comes with 1080i, and as the other guy mentioned you need to buy a HDD to enable 1080p. As for WiFi gaming, I have absolutely zero lag, so I don't know what you're getting at with that one.
I'm confused, a search on Google for Xbox 360 Arcade 1080p and hard drive turns up nothing relevant as far as I can tell. Why do you need a hard drive for 1080p on an Arcade?
The Xbox 360 Arcade has the same hardware features of the rest of the current Xbox 360s!! It can do HDMI 1080P right out of the box, you just need an HDMI cable!!
Just googled it, firmware update allowed native 1080p support for arcade
http://www.xbox.com/en-gb/community/news/systemupdate.htm
I was wrong, retrieving my katana for some old fashion Seppuku
i fairly certain you have some lag (latency), even if it's low. i'm also fairly certain that if you do a ping test with wireless and then again with wired you'll probably pull a faster time with wires. it wont be much, but if you play online shooters, you'll want the fastest time possible. 70ms may seem slow, but taken in to account that's only one-way, and human reaction times, it begins to add up.
@brothertim: uh, what? Ping is a measure of round trip latency. That is, to say, bidirectional. And comparing GigE to wifi on my network results in unmeasurable differences. And that is not taking into account that on my home network, the wifi portion is on a seperate vlan, travelling through 2 procurve managed switches before it hits the router, and the location that test machine and 360 that uses wifi are in is situated directly between 2 overlapping procurve PoE waps, and often switches back and forth between the 2. So no, there's no disadvantage in using wifi. And yeah, my home network is probably massive overkill, but when you get free high end network gear, why not?
@ outphase84
what i meant by "one way" is your computer and the server on the other end. Then, in turn, that server must communicate with all other players in the match to show them what you just did. unless you're connected directly to another player, which usually equates into bad experience for everyone (read: gears of war 1 host powers).
and your network isn't the norm. most people will have Xbox>router>modem>onlines. simple and straightforward, with minor tweaking. i'm sure you can get a stable connection from wireless, but is it worth the hassle if your console sits 1 foot from your router.
different strokes for different folks.
"Also, if you're using wifi for gaming, you're doing it wrong."
Not all of us play online games. Some of us just want to download demos and stuff, WiFi is fine and dandy for that.
how about they make it white.
because it goes with nothing else sitting on your entertainment system. i would gladly trade my white pro and a bill for a black elite.
What are you, racist? (i like the white 360 better too)
my black ps3 is the odd one out with the white xbox and the white wii next to it :/
Hmmmm, an Xbox 360 for $299, Wii for $249 or a PS3 for $299, thats a hard choice (sarcasim) lol.
You're right. The PS3 is the easy choice in that group.
People knock the 360 for not having WiFi, but Sony rarely gets it's balls busted so hard for not including a $1 IR receiver so that they can have a feature every home theatre enthusiast would want, namely compatibility with industry standard universal remotes.
But hey, Bravia Sync is WAY more important than industry standards. Welcome back, Sony of old. I can has root kit on my Blu Ray movies?
I don't think the PS3 is the easy choice. We have a PS3 sitting in our living room, and it hardly ever gets touched except for Blu Ray watching. There really aren't many good games for PS3, and the ones that there are seem to be more expensive than 360 games.
It's not a bad choice if you want to watch Blu Rays, though, but stand alone players are getting cheaper all the time.
can we all stop with the 'PS3 doesn't have that many good games' BS? I have both, most games (I'd say like 85%) are launched for both systems now and while I love my 360 exclusives (GoW1 & 2, Mass Effect (2 coming soon), Left for Dead (2 again coming soon), etc.) I also love MGS4, LBP, inFamous, etc. So please, PLEASE stop the BS 'no good games' argument. They're both great systems; it'll be interesting to me how this all plays out.
@ John, u really need to get out of your hole and go to gamestop, amazon.com, and best buy to see all the games available for the ps3. That argument is not valid anymore (what is this 2007?).BTW i do have ps3 and 360 and i play and love both equally. Also, your missing out on a lot of good games for ps3.
Thank you for suggesting that I formulate a new "argument." Although, I have trouble deciphering your world view--it is BS that there are very few games I want to play on the PS3 that is sitting in my living room? I THOUGHT that this was actually true, but now that you mention it, I may have unknowingly not found any games I wanted to play on my PS3 due to a subconscious desire to deceive people. Perhaps if I remove the veil of lies from in front of my face, I will realize that there are in fact many games I want to play for the PS3. I apologize for my deception.
Even if they drop the Elite to the $299 price point, I still can't get over the overly high hardware failure rate.
Estimated failure rates of early 360's is around 30% (Xenon and Zephyr)
Estimated failure rate of Falcon and Opus boards (65nm CPU and 90nm GPU) are sub 10%
These have been observed through testing no BS surveys like GI's recent one.
If you buy a 360 now you get a full 65 nm board (Jasper). While the estimated failure rates for those boards haven't been reported yet I can only speculate they they would drop to under 5%. The GPU was the issue with the 360 and now it has been been trimmed down. Looking at the impact that slimming down the CPU made I don't think it's that hard to speculate another drop in failure rates with the Jasper board. I have had my Jasper Elite since the beginning of the year and I haven't encountered a single problem the console has never frozen or needed to be restarted.
Hello and welcome to two years and a hardware change and a half ago.
@matt (the 2nd one)- Do all jaspers come with on board memory cards or just the arcades?
@Sean
The 360 came out in 05 it's been almost 4 years! Damn I can't believe the console is that old.
@h0mi
I assume you mean the 256 internal flash memory? Yes only the Jasper arcades came with that. The memory was necessary for the NXE update.
Now if only RIM would make a slim storm... :P
its over for the XBOX, say goodnight
You act as if all of a sudden people are going to stop buying 360 games. They don't even really need to sell any more consoles, as they make money on them now, and with most of the gamer public already HAVING a 360, they're going to continue to buy games. 4 years in, you don't just suddenly nose dive into oblivion.
That was either a weak attempt at trolling, or a strong attempt at overcoming your highly challenged intellectual capacity. Either way, prepare for translucence!!
GAME ON!!!!
Nintendo probably has to drop the Wii to $199. For $50 more for a PS3, its almost a no brainer.
Yea to me and you, but to others who are looking for a different type of gaming experience the wii is still their choice. Obviously the PS3 is superior in many ways, but they don't appeal to family and children as much as the wii. I would say it may change when motion comes out, but PS3 game developers won't go for the types of games that the wii plays. It'll be geared towards the majority that buy their systems, which are gamers, not children.
I don't know what you're smoking, but in Sweden the cost of consoles goes like this (in swedish currency):
Wii: 2890 SEK
Xbox 360 (no HDD): 1890 SEK
Xbox 360 (60gb): 2590 SEK
Xbox 360 (120gb): 3290 SEK
PS3 (fat) 3990 SEK
PS3 (slim): 3790 SEK
... also, the PS3 prices here still suck donkeyballs.
And the Xbox 360 is still the console with the best price at the moment.
(For comparison: ~7,4 USD = 1 SEK
Also, this is the average price, may differ slightly)
Hey, you've got it backwards (and slightly wrong on the rate), it's ~7.2 SEK to 1 USD
Ups, that's right. I meant the other way around. However, I don't think the rates are wrong - FOREX in Sweden stated 7,38 as I wrote it.
~456 dollars for an elite, what are you people smoking. If you're interested I can pay for one here and ship it to your door.
so for 7.4 dollars i get 1 sek, but what if i wanted more sek later on. what about for the whole night , how much is that?
@sinjinn
if you gotta ask, you can't afford it.
actually, the prices are like this (today)
Wii: 2569 SEK
Xbox 360 (no HDD): 1890 SEK
Xbox 360 (60gb): 2195 SEK
Xbox 360 (120gb): 2990 SEK
PS3 (fat) 3290 SEK (some retailers 2999 SEK)
PS3 (slim): 3649 SEK (will probably go down in a few days)
what the fuck are you guys talking about anyway?
you know... stuff...
Not for the first time. All 360s were the most expensive consoles when they launched.
Wasn't that the PS3 at it's ridiculous $600 price point?
Unless you mean when the 360 launched and it had no competition.
Well played. High five.
If Microsoft give the Arcade a 60gb HD and the Pro a 120gb HD, they'll be fine. You'll be able to step up if you want, but they'll still have the cheapest console ($199) and a equivalently priced one ($299).
Tell me why Microsoft who thinks they are so innovative. They cannot implement a built in wifi adapter. They are seriously smoking some dope for having drones pay 100 bucks extra for a clip on POS. Every next gen console has built in wifi. But not Microsoft. They expect everyone to be using Xbox Live but i refuse to
pay 100 for a crappy dongle an I'm not running a Ethernet cable down from my upstairs balcony into my downstairs living room. Get on the ball microsux!!