It's not quite a $99
Xbox 360, but if this apparent Walmart scan via
Kotaku is to be believed, that $199 Arcade version is getting a $100 gift card promotion going into effect this Saturday. In real terms, that boils down to a $234 Xbox 360 Pro for first-time buyers, seeing as you'll be needing that $135, 120GB hard drive, too. Also listed are a Sony Blu-ray player for $148 (we're guessing the currently-MSRP'd $199 BDP-S360), and a $298 HP G60-519WM, which touts a 2.2GHz Intel Celeron, 15.6-inch HD display, Windows 7 Home Premium, 3GB RAM, and a 250GB HDD -- not a bad followup at all for that
Compaq CQ60. Some interesting spy shots from the
Slick Deals forum seem to give credence to the scan, although we're still playing wait-and-see -- that $100 gift card with the Xbox 360 arcade is almost too good to be true, even if it is just a clever tactic to clear shelf space in the lead-up to Black Friday.
Update: Sure as the sun, an official ad has popped up on
Yahoo's front page. Screenshot after the break.
[Thanks, just4onepost]
posted Nov 4th 2009 12:29AM
$99 Xbox will certainly munch up the Wii...then again, this could be fake...
It's real. I heard an ad on the radio tonight that mentioned the 300 laptop. The ad said "This is just one of several great deals Walmart is rolling out this holiday season, so stay tuned for more falling prices and special events," etc etc etc. Last time they did this, it was pretty stealthy and they used a semi-hidden website to promote the deals, but if they are going the radio blitz route, I wonder if it will be worth lining up that early in the AM on a Saturday. I have my eye on that 42" LCD though. It's only 60hz, but at that price, who gives a crap.
Man, I'd drive the 200km down if the lines at the border weren't completely ridiculous. Wish Canada would get deals like that. Also, you don't really need the HDD to have a fully functioning 360. I have an arcade with 512MB memory card and it works fine - I stream media off my PCs and it's more than enough for game saves and the occasional map download.
No such thing as a $99 Xbox. Its a $199 Xbox and with it you get to spend $100 virtual dollars at Walmart. So, unless you are buying another Xbox with that gift card ...
People tend to need games too so that's where you can spend your extra $100. Mark, the border lines are not bad this time of year unless there's a hockey game.
Has no one realized that this could mean you could use the $100 giftcard for a HARD DRIVE? Wake up people...
yup it was true i got my 360 + 100$ gift card eventhough my walmart ONLY had 2 arcade 360's for sale
If this is real, I might buy a new one and mod my old one so I actually play it ever.
the current ad on Yahoo!'s homepage is for these Walmart deals
But without the HD, you technically get a 360 for a cool Benjamin. With a gift card and MW2 around the corner, I'm thinking at least a few people are going to have a very happy Thanksgiving/merry Christmas if this ad works out. I know quite a few people who woudn't refuse such a steal.
And i wonder what kind of drive they will have in them... :evilsmirk
I just bought an Arcade a few days ago that was made July 2009 and it had a Lite-On 83850C drive, but I've heard the newer ones have a 9xxxx series drive that cannot be modded. Check mfg. dates, you might get lucky
i heard about this earlier today. i just might consider buying a 360 now....wait a minute, no i wont. hahaha!
Thanks for your input. You have really contributed to the article with that statement. You have been awarded Lowest Ranking for going beyond the call of douchness. Now you can sit back and watch yourself vanish.
@Smart Mouth
um kind of ironic there aren't we
the irony continues!
yeah, i caught on to the irony also
As justonepost pointed out, it's real.
http://img255.imageshack.us/img255/142/99xbox.jpg
hmm.. i was looking at laptops under $500. if it runs windows 7 then i think i have found one. what do they mean about the gift card thing though, you get a free xbox with one??
Gonna go out and confirm this one, I work at a Walmart, won't say where, but my dept manager just went over this with me today. The $100 gift card is being called a "game card" so I'm not sure if it has to be used to purchase software, normally we just refer to deals like this as including a "gift card" not sure if its an important difference to the suits upstairs.
HP Laptop with a Celeron processor... ugh. Run.... Far Away.
no kidding. i forgot the Celeron still existed. then again for $300 you can't be picky. that $99 Xbox sounds pretty damn awesome though. i might have to pick one up.
it's not $99 though, they get you with the wireless adapter!!
@soulsaber
You don't need a wireless adaptor. While I agree the WIFI is seriously over priced, most Wireless Access points can be turned into a bridge using client mode. I picked up a Netgear WG602 for 19 bucks, configured it... it works great.
Not trying to start anything here, but that $300 laptop with decent specs is why PC > Macs. Find me a Macbook with these specs that costs less than twice that.
So if something is cheaper than something else, it is automatically better? Apple has chosen not to go after the same market as these lower specced systems. When you take into account build quality, specs, and customer support, macs are not that bad of a deal. In essence, you are comparing apples to oranges. You can't. It's two different markets. Some want a bare bones computer like the G60. Others want a higher quality, faster computer like a Macbook, MacBook Pro or a Thinkpad.
did you seriously bring up APPLE in an ad about WALMART?
You do know that Walmart sells Apple products, right?
@Michael H: Are you implying that apples are of a better build quality than oranges? I think oranges have a much more complicated flavor and are harder to bruise than apples! I really hate the whole comparison of apples to oranges metaphor. I feel like Apples vs PCs is better compared with a New Zealand Fuji apple and a North Carolina Red Delicious apple. They're both yummy, but the NZ apple is 3x as big, 4x expensive, and 2x as sweet as the the NC apple. Can I have both? I love apples.
Walmart is making $0 on these black Friday deals. The whole idea is to get you into their stores
to buy some of their other non-deal items when those limited stock deal items sell out.
If they were making $ on them why wouldn't they stock 1000s of these items in each store instead of 10?
That HP looks like a very good deal! if not for the single core processor and the integrated intel graphics! those things should disappear forever, especially on larger notebooks.
Sadly they never will.
@ Jon
the search wont end untill macs do.
Will this happen in Canada also? My 360 recently RROD and I'm in need of a new one. :\
I wonder if the gift card is going to be listed on the receipt. I would like to buy the XBOX and then go to customer service and swap it for a Wii. :p
Wont work. Trust me the system knows.
Can't you just put a laptop hard drive in the 360?
No.
Actually you can, but it has to be a Western Digital drive, and you have to "flash" it first with a PC and this little DOS program called HDDHackr. Oh, and you need a broken 20gb drive (for the plastic case)
I'm going to trample so many people on black friday. It's going to be so fun.
Doug....really? Is that funny in that sick piece of flesh called your mind?
Anyway - I'm psyched about the Black Friday deals BEFORE Black Friday. This almost guarantees that there won't be much reason to camp out come late November.
Will that stop people? Probably not, but at least more people will get a shot at something good without the threat of death.
Chance Stevens
So if I get the Xbox with $100 gift card can I use it right then and there on another transaction for the laptop?
So far, it looks like YES
its an egift card not a physical one...kinda a deal breaker if u ask me
Actually I went in this morning understanding it was an eGift card but it seemed like they weren't quite sure how to do it, so they were just handing out regular gift cards off the shelf for S$100. I wasn't going to complain...
Gift card is probably not good until the next purchase. You probably get it at the cash register.
Not a bad deal. It probably a walmart sales promotion not MS.
They can use those $100 to buy a WiFi dongle for Xbox.
My friend has been bugging me to get a 360, He is always lugging his over to my house when we hang out so I can get my 360 fix. Think I'm finally gunna have to get one, no excuses when buying a 360 for 100 bucks. I do all my grocery shopping at Wally World. So gift card is pretty much like cash to me. =)
It's not for everybody it's 10 per store,
minimum of 10. not 10 per store.
Looks like a good opportunity to replace my ailing day one 360.
Is it safe to assume that this gift card or whatever is for use at Walmart only? It's not like one of those Visa gift cards or something that can be used anywhere? That wouldn't make any sense to me from Walmart's point of view but crazier things have happened.
So, the Xbox 360 is $100, but you have to shell an an additional $100 for a proprietary HDD, and another $100 for a wireless adapter, and you still don't have a BD player? How is this a bargain?
Was this supposed to be a subtle comparison to the PS3? Why do fanboys do this?
It's a bargain if you don't care about a wireless controller, which it comes with FYI, and if you don't need a hard drive or Blu-Ray player. I have three Xboxen that have never played a game and are awesome for playing media from Media Center PCs and Netflix and Hulu, through PlayOn. Just as a media device this is a bargain. If you're into games I guess that's just an added bonus.
Correction:
You said wireless adapter, not wireless controller. My bad. But still, it's a good value.
Those in the know can just get a wireless bridge for $30 if they need wireless.
Is this a deal that they'd price match? I'd like to go buy a 360 today or tomorrow and just walk in for a price match on Saturday rather than having to get up really early and hope there isn't a huge line.
This is part of Wal-Mart's one day sale this Saturday Nov. 7th starting at 8 AM. Here is the page on their site:
http://www.walmart.com/catalog/catalog.gsp?cat=648061&povid=cat14503-env172199-module110409-lLinkSP1
So, what would prevent someone from grabbing this deal, then exchanging it a day later with a PS3, the price difference being made up with the gift card?
The gift card may be tied to the purchase. The details on the gift card seem to be fuzzy. Someone mentioned it's an online thing you fill out. Need more info.
you typically have to relinquish the gift card if you return the original product.
Of course, if you can find a deadbeat manager that'll let you get away w/ returning and keeping $100 that's another story entirely.
Might be worth a shot. I'd love to grab a PS3 for $200. Doesn't Walmart have a pretty liberal return policy for unopened items? If I 'lose' my receipt or say it was a gift wouldn't they take it back? Worse case, I have a spare 360 or I sell it on ebay it for $190.
If I didn't know that Netflix was on the way to the PS3, I would have bought one.
As it stands, even at $99 (excellent price - or rather $199 + $100 of free games or a Wifi Adapter), not interested I have to say.
The product page accessed through the ad link shows the Arcade as having 512MB of internal memory - those started shipping in early June, so you're almost guaranteed it'll be a LiteOn, and if the mfg date on the unit itself is after late July or early August then that LiteOn has a good shot at being one of the less-desirable 83850c (v2) or 93450C revisions.
Although at $100 net, it still wouldn't be a bad idea to pick one up and sit on it 'til the smarties figure out those 2 firmware revisions.
What is the problem with the LiteOn drives?
The newer 2 revisions of the LiteOns aren't hacker-friendly yet.
(My original post was intended to be a reply to Ryan G's "And i wonder what kind of drive they will have in them... :evilsmirk" post - I certainly didn't mean to imply that there's something inherently wrong w/ the LiteOn drives for those who just want to use the 360 as it was intended and keep their mitts out of the internals.)
I've flashed the 83850 (v2) Lite-On's just fine, they're actually EASIER than the V1 7xxxx series Lite-On (don't have to open the drive, no serial port needed). It's the 9xxxx (V3) Lite-On drives that cannot be flashed. I think these started appearing in Xboxes made after September. Besides that they're good drives, have a lot less disk errors than the old Samsung and Hitachi drives
No Tim, you've flashed a v1 83850, not a v2. For the LiteOn drives, there was the 7xxxx and 83850 (v1) which were both flashable, and now the 83850 (v2) and the 9xxxx, both of which are currently not flashable.
The two different versions of the 83850 are indistinguishable from the outside; speculation is that perhaps the v2 (which appeared July/August) is actually 9xxxx in old labeling.
Xbox deal is good. No walmart insight.
- Amir Rosenthal
Even though the arcade doesn't come with a hard drive, can you still put a hard drive in the arcade version?
http://bit.ly/1bsjDO
Yes. You can get cheap ones on eBay.
too bad there's no walmart in NYC.
So wait... if I get $100 gift card with purchase of the 199$ arcade, in essence we can't use the 100$ on the xbox purchase to take it down to 99$ correct? This really means your still paying 199$ for the arcade but just spending the 100$ free dollars on other things at walmart correct?
I mean I can get a cheap hard drive and the like... I just want to use that 100$ gift card on the xbox itself.
Wow, what are the odds...I'm about to pull the trigger on a Panasonic Plasma 42" for the same price as that 46" in the Walmart add. Guess I know where I'll be @ 8:00 am this Saturday :-)
You wont be able to use the card on the 360, but a wal-mart gift card is like probably the closest thing on the planet to cash. Who doesnt need tissue, milk, or an oil change? I've seen wal-mart cards sell on ebay for greater than face value.
I just called my local store to verify stock on the laptop, and the price is only good until NOON.
got one on walmart.com with 10% bing cashback.