Leaked Ad Shows $50 Xbox 360 Price Cut

[Osiris]

Shacknews has scans of a flyer from a retail store (K-Mart) that show a premium Xbox 360 for $50 off. No word on cuts for Microsoft’s other 360 models but this news comes on the heels of Sony announcing a $3.31 billion loss, they’ll be hard pressed to match this price drop. Any of you work at a large retailer have any info? Let us know.

The Premium version of Microsoft's Xbox 360 console may see a price cut from its current $349.99 retail price to $299.99 next month, according to scans of an alleged flier from retailer K-Mart.

[H]ard|OCP - www.hardocp.com

[CalcProgrammer1]

Awesome, just in time too, as I'm going to buy a new 360 Premium as soon as they get the Jasper boards out on the market. Maybe that's the reason? to sell off older consoles to roll out the new (and probably cheaper to produce) ones?

[Drizzt5]

How did sony lose 3.3 billion!?

[CalcProgrammer1]

Originally Posted by Drizzt5

How did sony lose 3.3 billion!?

Three simple letters (well...not all letters):

P. S. 3.

That's the thing that lost them so much money, and will keep losing them so much money. It has way too much technology for it's own good, and it costs a lot to produce. The 360 doesn't have as much stuff in it, but the games are comparable. In order to keep up with the competition, Sony has to sell their PS3 at prices that rival the 360, but doing so means Sony loses money.

[zedman3d]

The 360 doesn't have as much stuff in it, but the games are comparable.

And the 360 actually performs better and looks better in some cases, thats what Sony gets for being 'different'.

[CalcProgrammer1]

Performs great (when it works) and looks great too. I agree. The 360's case is nicely curved, it gives it a nicer look than a square box. The PS3 on the other hand looks like some sort of deranged George Foreman grill (note the PS3 Grill mod) and has unnecessary and unused power. 99% of games DO NOT NEED more than the 8GB that a basic DVD allows, and as you can see by the 360, that 8GB is plenty of space for even huge landscapes like Liberty City in GTA4. The 360 is surprisingly simple inside (I took mine apart because it's out of warranty and had RRoD), just two major chips (CPU and GPU), the RAM spaced around the GPU, the Southbridge, and the Encoder chip (for video output). The rest of the board is a lot of capacitors for maintaining power and small chips like the Ethernet controller and the chips for USB and SATA. The PS3 on the other hand has CPU, GPU, Emotion Engine (on certain models), a giant fan, hard drive, Blu Ray all crammed in that ugly box. The 360 keeps the HDD on the outside to save space and uses rear mounted fans to keep the height down. The only issue is the heat generated by the GPU, which can destroy the solder contacts and cause the infamous red ring of death, but with the new 65nm model GPU, the heat should be reduced to a level that the fans can keep up with.

Other than that, it looks better and definitely has better games. It also has the best online service (Xbox Live) and a much nicer, more comfortable controller than the PS3. The Wiimote is nice too, but for a traditional gamepad, the 360 controller beats all.

[surgeVel]

Amen to that ^^. Yeah, Sony loses something like $100+ per every PS3 sold. Add to that, they have the lowest attachment rate of any next gen. console and you can see why they are out so much money. The Xbox 360 used to lose money per console sold, but by now it either only loses a small amount (like $10-25) or not at all. Add to that, the 360 has the highest attachment rate of any next gen. console and it's easy to see how they are dominating Sony.

The attachment rates are something like 2.3 for Sony and 7.1 for Xbox 360, so on average and Xbox 360 owner will buy 4-5 more games, accessories, etc.

[jorsoft03]

I doubt anyone who works for a retailer will have any info, when I worked for Circuit City they didn't tell us anything about stuff like this until the day it happened. I definitely agree about the attachment rates, though. PS3 is just too expensive so they can't attach lots of accessories to it. It's too much of an initial investment for most people so they just buy like 1 or 2 games and maybe another controller, that's it. 360 on the other hand, b/c of the lower price point, customers would buy 4-5 games easily, at least 1 more controller, Xbox Live subscription, extended warranty, etc. almost as a given.

[Poizen22]

where almost due for a next gen console on the mircosoft side by now. xbox has probably another 2 years on its life span.

[CalcProgrammer1]

Not sure why Microsoft would make the "Xbox 720" now, the 360 is still doing very well, selling many units, and having tons of game production. Until the 360 slows its pace in the market, I don't see Microsoft making a "next-gen" console. Anyways, they've got at least 2 more 360 motherboard revisions planned (Jasper coming this August, and a rumored Valhalla single-chip design scheduled for sometime later), so it'll be around a few years more. Anyways, there's nothing wrong with it (aside from the RRoD, which the new revisions will fix) and the graphics are great.