MS increases Xbox 360 price in the UK
Microsoft has increased the cost of the Xbox 360 Arcade model by £30 in the UK, as well as changing existing bundles.
The price has been bumped up to £159.99 for the Xbox 360 Arcade bundle, which is an increase of £30 from £129.99. The Arcade bundle will also no longer get the five Xbox Live Arcade games which are currently included in the package, further reducing the value of the Arcade bundle.
Reports have come in from several retailers who received official confirmation from Microsoft earlier today, cementing earlier rumours of some changes in how Microsoft will sell the Xbox 360 in the UK. It's also expected that Microsoft will increase the price of Xbox 360 accessories by a quid or two, but that's yet to be confirmed.
The retail sources who've been reporting the price changes have claimed that Microsoft has made the changes to try and counteract the poor pound-to-Euro currency exchange rate at the moment, though Microsoft has made no official press statement about that.
Since the official release as handed out to retailers only mentioned the Xbox 360 Arcade and Elite bundles the move also strengthens the rumour that the Premium Xbox 360 bundle is about to be cut too and that the Elite will be the standard Xbox 360 model going forward. It's possible that Microsoft may be making room for a Natal bundle in the future too.
What do you think of the price cut? Let us know your thoughts in the forums.
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Discuss in the forums ReplyRaising 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)
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.
Anyone else in the uk sick of paying double the price of our american friends for items
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.
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.
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.
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.
this crap product and it out sold the ps3 unbelivible!!
Um, a 43.6% excursion in failure rates is not explained by a 3.3% difference in the number of people that use it for 3-5 hours a day.
Those people really need to learn how to interpret statistics.
This might explain why consumers of a broken X360 would buy another one: