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They reduce the cost of the initial purchase, and make their money from royalties on game sales, similar to Gillette razor and blades. If your competitor costs
by mikelward 11y ago
They reduce the cost of the initial purchase, and make their money from royalties on game sales, similar to Gillette razor and blades.
If your competitor costs $400 and you cost $500, you're gonna lose a lot of potential sales. When Xbox was initially $500, they ended up unbundling the camera and dropping the price to $400 because they were losing against the $400 PlayStation.
- castratikron 11y agoInterestingly the hardware becomes more valuable once it's been broken. For example, the jailbroken Apple TV 2 sells for more on eBay than the newer, locked down TV 3.
- ascagnel_ 11y agoBut with the rise of the "open" app store and the ability to build and run your own code on the ATV4, the price of the ATV2 has fallen rapidly.
- Zikes 11y agoI remember when the console prices were announced, at an E3 conference I think it was. The wild cheering when Sony announced the PS4's price would be $100 less than the XBone was surprising.
- mattmanser 11y agoXBone release a load of details which everyone hated. PS4 says, hey everybody we're not doing any of that. And. And. And...... We're $100 cheaper. Why was the cheering a surprise? It's classic showmanship. And they could afford to do it because they weren't bundling the controversial kinect.
- Zikes 11y agoIt was surprising because in between announcements a lot of people were still rooting for Microsoft. Call it fanboyism, brand loyalty, media spin, or maybe even Stockholm Syndrome, but a $500 Kinect-laden console actually seemed to sound appealing to the XBox crowd.