New Xbox 360 will ship with or without a hard drive!

[Dashken]

Microsoft announced Wednesday that it will sell two different versions of the Xbox 360, the next-generation video game console that makes its debut this fall.

One version will be a high-end model with a standard 20-gigabyte hard disk drive for $399, said Robbie Bach, Microsoft's chief Xbox officer. It will be backward-compatible with the top-selling original Xbox game titles and will come with a wireless game controller, a built-in Media Center Extender (for displaying videos stored on another computer), a wireless remote control and an Xbox Live headset.

This version is aimed at enthusiasts, and Microsoft is betting those gamers won't mind spending the extra money to get a hard drive that is better for online gaming and will come pre-loaded with videos and music.

The other version of Xbox 360 -- without a hard drive -- will be $299.

Both Sony and Microsoft charged $299 for their previous generation of consoles. This time, gamers who want the high-end version may end up paying more than an extra $100. The next-generation consoles will play games on older TVs, but they are best played on new digital TV sets, which could set gamers back another $1,000. And it's possible many games will sell for $60, above the usual $50.

Sony plans to launch its PlayStation 3 in 2006, and that machine is likely to be expensive as well.

"They are taking a different path than we have seen before in the console industry with the higher price,'' said Schelley Olhava, an analyst at market researcher International Data Corp. "Microsoft is launching ahead of the competition. If they find the price doesn't work, they can adjust it downward before the others launch.''


Xbox 360 Core

The low-end version is dubbed the Xbox 360 Core. It will have a wired controller but no headset or wireless TV remote. Players will have to buy flash memory cards to store game data.

The moves will help Microsoft offset the higher costs of a hard disk drive in the box. It is a disappointment to game developers who wanted the hard drive on every machine.

The developers were told initially that they had to create games that could exploit different kinds of storage options, such as a hard drive or a flash memory unit. For companies designing online console games such as Epic Games, that means they can't create games on the assumption a hard drive is on every box, as they could with the last machine.

But Microsoft figured out that its hard drive costs -- as much as $50 a machine -- prevented the company from being profitable in the first-generation Xbox. Also, game developers didn't exploit the hard drive as much as the company expected.

"The point here is about choice,'' Bach said. "In the past, game consoles didn't offer much choice. You got what they said you got.''

Explaining why Microsoft chose to do a version without a hard drive, Bach said, "You do a combination of things and triangulate on a solution. Cost certainly matters. The price the consumers will pay matters -- and the value they get. You have to also look by territory.''

In Europe, the Xbox 360 will cost 399 euros (about $490), while the Xbox 360 Core will be 299 euros. In the United Kingdom, the Xbox 360 will be 279 pounds (a little more than $500) and the Core 209 pounds. Prices in Japan will be announced at the Tokyo Game Show in October.

Microsoft engineer Jeff Andrews said recently at the Hot Chips conference at Stanford University that they had designed the Xbox 360 to operate with and without a hard drive. They left it to management to decide what business strategy to pursue. "We have been talking about two SKUs (numerically distinct identifiers) as a possibility for a while,'' Bach said. "We hadn't locked in until we had a specific meeting. We did tell the game developers to be ready for it from the start.''


October event

Bach said the company wasn't ready to reveal launch dates yet. Microsoft has scheduled an event for Oct. 4-5 in Amsterdam to reveal more about its Xbox 360 games.

Wireless Internet will be an optional add-on for both versions. It will cost $99 to add the 802.11 a/b/g wireless networking capability. Bach said that the costs remained too high to include the feature in every box.

"You have to remember,'' he said, "Even if we double or triple the number of people on Xbox Live, it's still not the majority of customers today.''

Every Xbox console will come with some common features such as support for 720 progressive scan digital TV, the Silver Edition of Xbox Live for free, progressive scan DVD, an Ethernet cable and a Media Center Extender.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/s/sv/20050818/...y/_www12414694

[bugmenot]

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[aKho]

Originally Posted by bugmenot

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