News Xbox 360 to see yearly price cuts

Commodore 64, Atari 2600, AND a working NES here. My wife wants to kill me sometimes. Had a PS1 until I finally traded it in for my PS2 about 1 year ago.

@Masterninja,

I understand your points, but I think we'll all just have to disagree...except: Maybe...

MS is selling the consoles to families. But game companies are still developing a lot for adolescents.

There's the harmony in all our points of view. And if you look at it, it's the most profitable. The feature-sets of consoles are getting immense: MP3, DVD, blah blah blah. As you say, we have all those, but we maybe don't have them in one box...

So, the system? That's focused on mom and dad, who can then play their particular fancies later...or use it to watch a new DVD, or whatever. The SYSTEM itself provides value, and Dad (figurative, not you, Dad) says "Oh, MS is selling all this hardware at a loss, even...that means it costs even more to build than we're paying for it...and at $300, that's a lot of system" and Mom says "Well, does it minimize the amount of crap you have surrounding my TV?" And dad and mom can now play trivial pursuit with their friends, or jeopardy, or some other fun party game. And dad can play his football, and mom can play her Sims (or in my house, my wife can play the football too!)...they'll buy puzzle games, and silly games, and things that you can play for hours and wonder where the time went. And if you notice, those games are usually not widely advertised (except the sports franchises), and not expensive compared to other games (again, except sports, cause dad will shell out...dad also spent $900 on the TV which mom is gonna kill him for). System provides value, parents' games provide value (at least over the cost of the latest and greatest whatever). And mom and dad are now happy having bought the bloody thing. Now on to your point....

A lot of the big-press games for console nowadays ARE shorter, and ARE focused on little Jimmy being cool. Christ, I still remember logging in more than 99 hours on FFVII (the counter stops after then). Some games still provide value as well (mostly RPG and sports), but not the ones with major media hype. After all, where IS major media hype targetted at? TEENAGERS. People who succumb easiest of any demographic to mass-marketing tactics of sex, violence, and drugs...funny enough, the bulk of content in many mass-advertised games now. No coincidence. And a GAME...well, Little Jimmy can afford "just a GAME"...or he can con grandma to buy it for him. Or ask for it as a christmas present. Etc., etc.. And that's where the console makers make back their money.

So how's that theory? Neither side is wrong...older gamers ARE getting catered to now, moreso than ever. Same with women gamers. But for those people, you have to offer the values. And so they're not the target of the biggest profit margins: the games. That's for Little Jimmy. To the kid, you need to offer the bling, and put it in his price range...a game does just that...as soon as you convince Dad and Mom to buy the system.

 

Why do I get the sudden desire to buy a 360 now Da Dego? You're a marketing major aren't you? Gah I guess the system will prove to be a value now, and then little Jimmy(actually Jacob) will of course con Grandma into buying him games!!!! Great! thanks alot !!!
hehehe

I'll probably end up getting one when I can afford one (if ever!!)

-Fiz

 

I can wait. The only games I've bought for Xbox was Halo, Halo 2, Halo 2 MP, GTA III, GTA:VC, GTA SA. So yeah, until I hear news and pics of GTA or Halo 3, I will not be getting an Xbox 360. But some of those other FPS games are looking juicy.

 

I agree completely with Da Diego and Fibblebot. And I'll still be buying the console on release. I do realize I'm not the majority of people.. but its not in a rush to be the first to have it. Its because I really want to play Oblivion while comfortably sitting on my couch and enjoying my new 52" high def DLP tv.

Gaming is in fact starting to target older audiences. Thats one thing that has caused Nintendo to struggle in 3rd place for so many years. Their games dont factor in the people age 16+.

As someone said earlier (I think it was the pope) its a trade off. You save money, but you lose time. You buy now, you can enjoy your investment for months/years to come. Or you can wait till the price goes down and enjoy it then, but ultimately for less of a period of time than those early adopters.

What it comes down to is a matter of opinion/perspective. If you think you will enjoy it enough, you will really value the time spent enjoying it and the release price wont be a turn off. If you dont really care for such things, or are happy where you are. You can wait for the price to drop and pick it up then.

I've never been one to wait for things unless its painfully obvious (couple months prior to a huge price drop.) I rather pay for something and enjoy it to the fullest for as long as I can.

To whoever said that games have lost a primary focus toward gameplay over the years, I would have to strongly disagree with you there. Its easy to take your perceptions as a child out of context and view them as complex instead of seeing the reality of things : when your a child everything looks big due to an undeveloped view of the world and lack of worldly experience you achieve as an adult.

Games these days are a lot more complex both graphically and in terms of game mechanics/game play. Take mario brothers for example. Jump, left, right, duck and shoot fireball. Now take god of war.... the difference in GAMEPLAY is tremendous.

I don tknow about you.. but I'd rather have a 20 hour game that is fully captivating, with really complex and intriguing gameplay than a 200 hour game thats repeditive and simple.

Using fable as an example is horrible since everyone knows that game was one of the worst in terms of game length when compared to what was expected of it. By many peoples standards it was a flop and by no means does it represent the average game of today.

I put in over 100 hours into final fantasy 10. Elder Scrolls IV Morrowwind? There are tons of games that are very long and in which the gameplay is leaps and bounds beyond what was created in the past.

 

LOL, You say all that and the only thing that comes to mind is dad playing football while mom is screaming at him to "put the damn thing down and fix the sink" because he never does anything around the house any more but play games while she contemplates divorcing him and little 12 year old jimmy is cheating on his home work from school so he can show something to his parents to convince them to let him play the new GTA game he talked them into buying because they never look at the ratings or pay attention to him any more because there too busy fighting about how they never seem to have enough time to spend with each other.

Hey lets notch one up for the gaming industry and their ability to bring families together to play video games around the TV.

I'm not trying to start an argument here but I do want you to realize that rarely are video games family oriented and in my experience I have never seen them bring a family together in any positive way. My friends nephew is 12 and failed school last year because he never wanted to do anything but play his video games he would lie about home work ignore and back talk his mother and if his mom tried to take it away he would freak out and get physically violent with here so he could get it back. He is generally off in his room playing his games and won't even stop them to eat, he eats in his room while playing his games. Also he has his mom rent a new game every 2 weeks and beats them in 2-3 days. Absolutely psychotic!

 

satyric saint, I see your points.. but video games can and do bring families closer together in many ways. It depends on the family. More importantly it depends on the parenting.

As a kid I used to play Bubble Bobble ALLL THE TIME with my grandmother. 90% of the time I spent with her was mashing buttons and passing levels. The other 10% was putting the NES system back up on the stand from her yanking it off by trying to jump by flapping the controller around. (she was a genious I tell ya.... she already had the revolutions mo-cap functionality in mind 10-14 years ago!)

The same happend with my mom and aunt. My brother, sister, mother, aunt and grandma used to all sit in a room playing bubble bobble, mario bros, super mario 3 and various other games having fun taking turns going through levels. A couple months back (I'm now 24) my brother got bubble bobble for his GBA player and we went at it again to bring back the old days. Sometimes we get together and play mario party. I'm not kidding you in any way. Video games are a fun way to pass time with my family when we get together.

We had a lot of fun with DDR and the like.

So, your views while can be applied to many families are also very VERY steriotypical and narrow minded (not meant to be an attack.. i'm not saying that YOU are that way.. just that this specific opinion in fact is). Video games can be a great night of entertainment for the whole family. Or they can degrade your household and push the family apart. When it comes down to it, it depends on parenting and the personalities of those within the family. It depends on what sort of example parents set for their children, how they raise their children from an early age, and how they look at video games.

If Da Diego was playing a football game and his wife askes for something(and has an understanding of how entertaining video games can be, thus doesnt ask for somethign unless its important) he will pause the game and go help. If he is a responsible mature adult (which I assume he is) he will have no problems fixing the sink, or taking out the trash on his own dime. Chances are if his wife was getting angry due to him playing video games and not taking care of his husbandly duties, its not a result of video games but a result of his person. If he didnt have video games to draw a scapegoat upon, he would be out on the front curb drinking with the neighbor, cleaning the grill, fixing the car or doing something else he enjoyed while the wife was screaming at him to perform his husbandly duties while little jimmy sat teary eyed staring at a divorce waiting to happen.

 

Heh...Yeesh, Asphix...you make it sound so pleasant!

Yeah, the wife is as addicted as I am, so that helps. And as you say, it is a lot of what families make of it. My parents were not big on the whole video game thing, it was technology they saw as unnecessary and trivial, and so in my childhood it was a bit of a wedge, a reward, and a punishment when it was taken away. It wasn't seen as 'family' time at all...which is a shame. I do think that the landscape has evolved way beyond that now, as you have mentioned - the problem isn't the games, it's the people playing them that cause issues. And it's getting to be that more and more people are realizing that and incorporating it in as family time instead of just lumping it under "kid stuff..." And console makers are recognizing this trend.

 

Asphix, Diego

I do understand where you’re coming from, my family used to sit around and play Jeopardy, Family feud, and wheel of fortune but when was that last time you saw a game like that for the PS2 or X-box? I have seen the (for lack of a better term) Dark side of what games can do to kids and it’s not pretty and with parents using games as a babysitter (much like the TV used to be) they just don’t take as much of an active interest in what their child is playing just as long as it keeps them quiet. (i.e. the grandmother who bought the grandchild GTA SA and let him play it till she heard about the “hot coffee” patch on the news and suddenly realized what was in the game content even though it was rated for mature right on the box.)

My point is that the new consoles that are coming out aren’t being sold to families they are being sold as bragging rights to little Timmy and Johnny so they can say they have a better system.

 

Heh...I guess i see your point, but just to respond...when was the last time I saw jeopardy, family fued, etc?

My wife and I have 2 Trivial Pursuit games a Jeopardy in our current PS2 collection. They're out there. Make some GREAT party games.

 

This is part of my point. The console manufacturers may be marketing to families, but if families already have everything else that the console provides (except for video games), then the marketing becomes redundant. Mom and Dad may have the money, but Timmy and Johnny are still the target audience. MS can't convince parents to buy Halo for their kids, but they can convince kids to ask for Halo from their parents; money's the same to MS no matter who had it to begin with.

I'd recommend you all read http://pointlesswasteoftime.com/games/crash.html. It discusses the business model of the video game industry and the inherent flaws in it, and explains why the current method of upgrading consoles every 3-4 years can't be maintained for much longer.