Xbox 360 pricing downed Down Under
Aussie gamers to be better off?
Australian gamers have become the latest console fans to benefit from Microsoft’s ongoing series of regional Xbox 360 price cuts.
The firm today confirmed that the basic Arcade model, which doesn’t feature any built-in storage, will cost A$349 ($335/£168/€211) instead of A$399 ($383/£192/€242). The mid-range Premium console, which has a 20GB hard drive, will set gamers back A$499 ($479/£240/€302) down from A$579 ($556/£279/€351). The top of the range Elite, which has a massive 120GB hard drive, will ship for A$649 ($623/£313/€394), instead of A$729 ($700/£351/€442).
Microsoft’s monetary move also now makes the Xbox 360 Arcade the cheapest of all three consoles in Australia, with the Wii priced at around A$399 ($383/£192/€242) and the PlayStation 3 at about A$699 ($671/£337/€424).
Local Microsoft representative Jeremy Hinton said that the price cuts, which also apply in neighbouring New Zealand, are an attempt to “do what’s best” for the Australian consumer. So we can expect a Blu-ray add-on drive then, can we, guys?
In the US, Microsoft recently slashed $50 (£25/€33) off of the price of the Premium Xbox 360, bringing the unit’s price down to $299 (£150/€189). There's widespread speculation that the company is on the verge of making further price cuts across the 360 range.
Back in March, Microsoft also performed a UK Xbox 360 price cut. It slashed the price of its Arcade unit from £200 to £160 (€210/$320) and changed the Premium model’s price to £200 (€260/$400) instead of £250. The all-singing, all-dancing Elite was cut from £300 to £260 (€341/$520).
COMMENTS
@AC
"Have you not heard of Haze? or the 2,4 firmware?"
Why yes; yes I have. Haze is the game that memorably received 4.5/10 at IGN and a 5 at Edge. The 2.4 firmware is the update that has been pulled from Sony's systems after bricking a number of machines to the point where only a drive format will fix it.
This helps your PS3 Fanboyism how, exactly?
In reality, both are perfectly good machines, with much to recommend them. Mark is clearly being his usual silly self by claiming that the ability to watch movies in HD is an essential feature of a games console, but he probably doesn't even own a Wii, so we'll move swiftly on. 'ooFie' is correct that you're much better off with some sort of PC than either for media playback (other than Blu-ray discs) however, due to the multitude of formats in use these days.
@Highlander
oh yeah! my mistake, 3 games for the 'best' 'games console' -_-
No wonder it requires all the bells and whistles, its still trying to be this 3rd place it never managed to get to with the PS2.
Guess they never heard of the multimedia PC, which these days you could probably get for a lot less (though admittedly not as good looking) than a PS3. And it would steam the pants of both the PS3 and 360 which frankly are rubbish at doing so which is why I spent some cash on a Mac Mini to do the job, its alot quieter than a PS3, prettier than a PS3, as damn well as expensive as a PS3. And isnt a games console like the PS3 :D
*\. Mines the coat that isnt pretending to be a tent.
Haze is the greatest
and GTA looks so much better on the PS3:
See... XBOX 360 version: http://tinyurl.com/5sgz6n
Now look at the PS3 version: http://tinyurl.com/4ebqgr
See the PS3 version is superior. I can't put a picture of how quick it loads though sorry, but take my word for it. I get calm good feelings when i play it online too, because I know deep down within me that I wrong get a ring of death on me.
I can't stop playing Haze, I was so glad it came out because I was getting fed up of defending Resistance all the time.
What about Metal Gear hmmm? I'd never played a metal gear game before, but I did now because I wanted to be able to play a decent game on my console. Wow it is looking brilliant! Up yours 360 because you'll never have it lol.
@XBOX 360 owners... FAIL
Mark
Surely he just makes comments like that so he can sit back and watch the flame war he creates.
Don't feed the trolls.
@ooFie
There's a game, you may have heard of it, Metal Gear Solid 4. Sold pretty quickly, or so I'm told. And it's um, exclusive, to a particular platform, or did you just forget?
@ all the Fanbois.
- BluRay isn't slower, it has better seek times than a standard DVD player, and far higher data transfer rates. Compared against a 48x DVD, yeah, it's slower track to track, but then, so is/was HD-DVD.
- HDD Installs. Well, some consoles all come with an HDD so Devs can do an install to improve load times and streaming of content. What's that you say? Core Xbox360 has no HDD? I see. 'nuff said.
- Neither PS3 nor 360 will 'win' this generation. According to the pundits that's already been done by Nintendo. Or, if you're reading in America where the pundits can't actually see beyond the US Border, well then obviously the 360 is winning - except it's already been outsold in the US by the Wii. 'Course you could just look at the HD consoles. Xbox 360 still leads there, in the US. Europe is doubtful and Japan is such a lost cause it's actually embarrassing.
- Haze. That game just plain blows. Yeah, I know there is this weird paranoia around that let's PS3 fanboys think every reviewer hates them (that's true) and automatically give bad reviews to games, especially exclusive titles. Well, that was true for a while at first, but in truth Haze just plain blows.
-Firmware 2.4 - the holy grail? Well, believe it or not, most Playstation gamers are not hanging on the edge of their seats waiting for trophies, in-game XMB access or cross game messaging. Sure they are nice to haves, but the people who really clamor for these things are folks with a compulsion to do tick box comparisons of one product against another. So tick away my friends. Don't forget to tick the $50/year box on the 360 and skip that one on PS3.
- RROD? Yeah, BIG problem on older Xbox 360s. MS handling of it sucked/sucks. Refurb systems aren't much better. Newer model revisions with smaller CPUs have helped, but in truth halving the failure rate merely takes an approximately 30% failure rate and makes it between 10% and 15%. That's still around 10 times the failure rate of PS3s or Wiis. Not exactly something to write home about, is it? Once they shrink the GPU, revise the motherboard, drop the component count and get their manufacturers to do some quality testing things should improve greatly. Perhaps next year?
Media streaming from the PS3? Not sure, I'd have thought most would prefer streaming media *to* the PS3 for display on their HDTV? Not sure why you'd want to stream much media from the 360 or PS3, but if the 360's better at it, groovy. Though that 360 obviously needs to be an Elite otherwise that paltry 20GB (assuming you're not stuck with an HDD-less core) drive won't be streaming much media.
Really it's a little stupid to blather on about the PS3 not having any games, when obviously it does, and actually a fairly decent library. It's a bit stupid to claim that the multi-platform titles are all gimped, when really they're not, although that first wave or 360 ports stank like an old fish on a hot day.
You know, it's actually easy to bash any of the consoles. I could write an equally long post about how Wii is crap, or how the PS3 is crap, or how the Xbox 360 is crap. It's not like you can't find fault with these things if you look. They all have certain aspects that present nice big targets. You know, the Wii being two GCs duct taped together, the 360 being one key press short of an RROD and the PS3 being so damned expensive. See, it's easy.
It's just as easy to stop the fanbois crapola and simply post about the article at hand. In this case the falling price of the Xbox360. The thing that stood out most for me from the article was the hideously high price that Australians are paying for an Xbox360 core unit with no HDD. This has nothing to do with any other console, it's just an observation that the price is crap anyway, so it's a reduction from a really really crap price to a plain old really crap price. And the fanbois angle is?
