News MS increases Xbox 360 price in the UK

http://www.bit-tech.net/news/gaming/2009/08/17/ms-increases-xbox-360-price-in-the-uk/1

Microsoft has officially upped the RRP of the Xbox 360 Arcade SKU in the UK.

 

Same old story, we pay loads no matter what the economic climate is like.

 

Wow, I just read the other day how they are going to drop the 360 Elite to $300 here in the US.

 

I've just read they're phasing out the Pro console and dropping the price of the Elite.

Raising the price of the Arcade is to push adopters into getting the Elite instead (I suppose with downloadable games/movies etc... they'll get more cash from people downloading to the HDD on the Elite than they would from Arcade users with no HDD)

 

without the hard disk the arcade never appealed to me. I agree with you blademrk, if the elite comes down in price then that makes sense.

 

Sales will drop... they'll see.

 

Sales didn't really increase a great deal when the dropped it so I doubt it matters much, if you want an xbox you'll still buy it at that price, its still the cheapest console available.

I did wonder how they were managing to continue these cheap boxes when the cost of everything else was rising, just assumed it was a case of win market share at all costs.

 

They should get rid of the arcade and make the pro the entry level console, or perhaps bring back the 20Gb hard drive and stick that on the arcade.

 

They should stop dicking about with SKUs, in my opinion. Have just the Elite. Costs will be reduced slightly by not having to have multiple sets of packaging, advertising and manufacturing setups etc. and it will be simpler for everyone.

 

Arcade apealed to people who just wanted hte console and none of the extra crap that comes with it. Still have my 20gb orginal and still havent filled it up. 360 is too noisy for films anyway. we never know with multiple skus which is selling more. So it will be intresting to see how it goes from here onwards. Any ps3 price drop could see this gap close rapidly.

Anyone else in the uk sick of paying double the price of our american friends for items

 

Simple solution, join Europe and the Euro.

 

Truer words have never been spoken.

In all the years that £1>$2, we still paid ~£1=$1. It's a self fulfilling prophecy, companies charge the UK more because every other company does.

 

This may be pointing towards the rumours of the 60gb pro being phased out, and replaced by the elite, and makes sense to make the arcade look an unatractive price? compared with the newer priced elite possibly?

 

Well it started with the Wii hiking up the price again then with activision doing it with the games and finally MS.

Well, they obviously dont want much money especially when games themselves have dropped in price so much they are still not shifting.

I cant believe I recently bought a new release for £30 to find its dropped to £18 after only 2 weeks on the 360.

Retailers will still sell the 360 below RRP because they wont shift otherwise.

 

Not only that, but if this has any effect at all, it will be to stop people spending money on 360's, making MS complain more about not making enough money and having to bump up the price!

 

Not only that but recently the GBP:EUR spot has improved (its back up to 1.16 ish from the lows of 1.02/03).

When will companies like Microsoft and Nintendo realise that the products they sell (the consoles) are a luxury item, you can't just increase your price by quite a substantial amount and expect it to keep on selling, especially when the economy is so bad and people are already feeling the pinch.

 

Perhaps it's a government conspiracy to stop jobless people spending too much time playing games instead of looking for work!!!

 

I find it a bizarre time for them to hike up costs considering the exchange rate is higher than it's been in quite a while.

Okay, it was 1.7 last week and has since dropped to around 1.65, but still towards the beginning of the year it was around 1.3.

I think they want more money and are using this as an excuse.

 

exchange rate has gone up in recent months

it was at 1.40 or sumit back in december

ms just giving us a price rise. Most people who want an elite now have one. Elite is still alot of money for what you get for most people. Diffrence between elite and ps3 is below £60 on play.com. If elite price rise does go through ( as this artical mensions) Then it will come even closer.

Arcade is still £137 ( nearly 80 more for features most wont use for the elite.) Most of my m8s got an arcade instead of a core or elite. As the main reason was it was cheap. And they had no interest in buying stuff of xbox live.

 

I just read online today that the fail rate on the xb360 is 54% who in their right mind would buy
this crap product and it out sold the ps3 unbelivible!!