XBox 360 prices to go up in Great Britain
Those well know altruists Microsoft are once again showing how much they care for our little island:
"Retailers have told Eurogamer that Microsoft will increase the price of the Arcade Xbox 360 bundle to GBP 159.99 (from GBP 129.99) starting September 1. The five XBLA games will no longer be included in the bundle, either.
ShopTo boss Igor Cipolletta received confirmation from Microsoft this morning, as did a corroborating independent retail chain source.
Eurogamer was also told that Microsoft will increase the price of individual Xbox 360 accessories by one or two pounds. An independent retail source said this was being done to counteract the poor pound-to-Euro currency exchange rate. "
Source: http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/microsoft-to-increase-360-arcade-price
It's always Blighty that cops these things. We get bad, late, overpriced PAL conversions, our hardware is overpriced and often inferior, and we very often don't even get conversions of some good games.
Incidentally, I realise that this isn't exactly uber-confirmed yet, but since it's about Micro$oft caring only about cash then it does seem very likely to be true, which is why I posted it here. I was planning on buying a 360 when Rare release Perfect Dark for it later this year (assuming they do a good job of it), so price increases aren't too welcome, al least not to me.
"Retailers have told Eurogamer that Microsoft will increase the price of the Arcade Xbox 360 bundle to GBP 159.99 (from GBP 129.99) starting September 1. The five XBLA games will no longer be included in the bundle, either.
ShopTo boss Igor Cipolletta received confirmation from Microsoft this morning, as did a corroborating independent retail chain source.
Eurogamer was also told that Microsoft will increase the price of individual Xbox 360 accessories by one or two pounds. An independent retail source said this was being done to counteract the poor pound-to-Euro currency exchange rate. "
Source: http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/microsoft-to-increase-360-arcade-price
It's always Blighty that cops these things. We get bad, late, overpriced PAL conversions, our hardware is overpriced and often inferior, and we very often don't even get conversions of some good games.
Incidentally, I realise that this isn't exactly uber-confirmed yet, but since it's about Micro$oft caring only about cash then it does seem very likely to be true, which is why I posted it here. I was planning on buying a 360 when Rare release Perfect Dark for it later this year (assuming they do a good job of it), so price increases aren't too welcome, al least not to me.
Post edited by ewgf on
Comments
Here you go:-
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/8207472.stm
New one to be ?50 cheaper
Doesn't matter, I'm still gonna get a Wii if I get any nex' gen' big 3 mofo console.
The sole reason I'd get a PS3 is for God of War 3, big fan of the other 2 games, and really want to know how the saga ends (if it does end with 3? Hopefully it will, and they won't milk and kill off another good series with millions of stupid sequels).
Aye - it's happening for other consumer electronics, too. The exchange rates have been kinda crazy this past years or so.
Ouch, that's still ridiculously expensive for a games console. Must be all those super cool exclusive PS3 games that make it worth it.... Oh, wait a minute.... No, must be the ability to play all your old PS/PS2 games.... Nope.... er, why would anyone want a PS3 again?
Not since the days of Sega has a console manufacturer so badly dropped the ball.
Quite right, and early versions of PS3 with backward compatibility not manufacturing anymore.
Such a shame..
http://zx-pk.ru/
Yeah, but did we ever truly get the benefit of low prices compared to oversees consumers when the pound was better?
If that's true and the price drop/rise of the PS3/360 isn't vapourware then it could really play into Sony's hands. If I were them I'd go a bit further and drop to ?199 (which they probably could as they've recently announced the cost of making a PS3 has dropped 70% from its original cost) and try and catch up with the Wii/360 installed user base.
Only when the manufacturer was British.
But for companies exporting to Britain, putting up prices when the exchange rate works against you is sound financial sense.
That's why I still haven't bought one - of the three current gen. machines, the only one I want is a 360, but I haven't bothered as I know that with my luck I'd get stuck with one that dies (as would the replacements). Instead, I play the few 360 games that I really want to play on my mates' 360s (I know a fair few people with 360s, and I don't think I know one who isn't on less than his third 360 by now, and at least one is on his fifth, though to be fair he doesn't work and spends most of his time on XBox Live!).
The failure rate is far better than it was, but it's still not good.
Quote "It will cost $299 in the US, 299 euros in Europe and 29980 yen in Japan." Unquote. Now, I don't know about Yen, but according to:
http://www.xe.com/ucc/convert.cgi
299 Euros is ?255.123, which in dollars is $422.28 (according to http://www.dollars2pounds.com/), which means that, as usual, we Brits get ripped off. No change there, then.
I don't know what the overall quality of PS3 games is like, I've only played on one a couple of times, and then it was only Resistance: Fall of man (very nice), and a racing game (very nice graphics, but I'm not familiar enough with racers to judge this one against the competition) before my mate sold it and bought a 360 again (it was a replacement for a broken 360, and he missed XBox Live! and his contacts too much).
But I have to say that the lack of backward compatability killed off any chance of me wanting a PS3 - if it did run PS1 and PS2 games then that would be a real plus point for people like me who didn't want to dump their PS games collection. As it is, when I do finally buy a current gen. machine I'll have to buy a bigger SCART splitter box (I've already got three consoles, Satellite, a DVD player and a VHS recorder fighting for attention), whereas if the PS3 was backwards compatible, then I could have permanently disconnected the PS2, which would have helped a little.
But, and I haven't looked TBH, the XBox probably isn't manufactured here in Blighty. Neither would the Wii or PS3. Truth be told, very few technological goods are.
So they've made money when the pound was good and are trying to squeeze it when the pound is in their favour.
I work for a manufacturing company whose exports have gone through the roof and whose UK based sales have gone through the floor. We find we can charge, for example, German customers 3 or 4 times the profit margins we can for a domestic sale. Tell the truth, it's the only thing keeping us afloat at the mo'!!
It was probably Motorstorm. For a long while it and R:FoM were the only games worth bothering with on PS3. It's a bit better these days, but there is very little in the qay of quality exclusives and the rest is pretty much indistinguishable from the 360 versions.
And when even John Carmack, once avid supporter of the PS3, is saying that the machine just doesn't have the raw performance of the 360 and bemoaning the difficulty in getting stuff to work on it, it's hardly surprising that the 360 is a more attractive target for developers.
The new Arcade version and the Elite version are generally considered to be reliable since they use a different manufacturing process than the older models. With the Pro being phased out these 2 are your current choices anyway! IAC, don't let the failure rate hold you back - MS has a 3 year cover on the RROD - so a replacement (generally done within 3 days if not on the same day) is just a call away.
Bytes:Chuntey - Spectrum tech blog.
i was in game the other day returning a game and there was a customer next to me buying a years insurance policy, the girl selling it, said it would cover the red ring of death which is great seeing as microsoft cover that for 3 years. mong.
:lol:
They used to say "there's one born every minute..." but I reckon with todays high numbers of mongtards it's probably coming in at under 30 seconds.
nah i didn't mean the person buying it, she was a middle aged woman, she isn't gonig to know what was being said, i meant the girl selling it. i was gonig to say something, but they'd prolly ban me or something.
anyway she'd prolly get mad when she opens the box and there is a big leaflet explaining the extended warrenty and then she'd feel like she has been ripped off. and she wont shop in game anymore. she'll buy her games elsewhere. hence the shop assistant being the mong.
the customer is always right phrase doesn't mean the customer is always correct, it means don't piss them off as they are the ones paying your wages.
i hate the assistants who come up and say 'do you need any help'.
fair enough if i am looking at a system as obviously i am a new buyer, but when i am browsing games what sort of help could i possible need?
yeah i don't know the alphabet and need to find the games beginning with d.
can you recomend a game with tits in it?
will these xbox games work on my dvd player?
so i take the empty box to the checkout?
these stickers with numbers on the games, what exactly do they mean?
i have a load of copied games, can i just buy these empty boxes?
The minute the lass behind the counter said "this warranty protects against the red ring of death". I'd have thought..."hold on...I need to buy an extra policy to protect me against something the manufacturer, and this lass behind the counter, acknowledges happens?"
For me, that would at least start me asking questions as to what the RRoD actually is and how it is fixed.
The answer would have been something like "When you get the RRoD, fetch your machine back in and we can send it away to get it fixed for you...", to which I would have said "So I have to pay extra for Game to fix a problem that Microsoft acknowledges is a issue? Why can't Microsoft fix it and why aren't they paying for it??"
I agree the middle-aged woman might not know anything about XBoxes, but she should at least know basic statutory buyers rights? She might have asked "is that not covered in the warranty?"
The issues for me is the buyer isn't doing enough homework and Game are blatantly ripping folk off with their policy. UNLESS threir policy is an extension to the manufacturer policy so when the MS 3 year 1 ends, the Game 1yr covers you for the extra year?
- IONIAN-GAMES.com -
The entire "extended warranty" business is predicated on customers not really knowing their rights and being easily persuaded they need extra "insurance" on any goods that cost a reasonable amout of cash.
(Psssst...can you explain what that word means before anyone notices that I don't undserstand it? :grin:)
(psst ... it means based on... I don't think anyone noticed. :grin:)
Yep, I saw this on my way home from work today. I actually very nearly brought an 80gig PS3 on my way home, the only thing that stopped me is that I normally go down the pub on Weds nights and I wouldn't have had time to play on it tonight. A little something for the weekend perhaps ;)
I really don't like the look of that new slimline PS3. Looks like a bairn's toy V-Tech type thing to me. Or a really big spec case.
I don’t think I have the stomach for it.
--Raziel (Legend of Kain: Soul Reaver 2)
https://www.youtube.com/user/VincentTSFP
(psst...cheers man! :grin:)
Yes, it is very much so predicated in my opinion too.