An interesting rumour..

[Myname]

A friend of mine who works in the shop Gamestation (biggest independent game retailer in the UK) let me know that apparently Microsoft will be doing a 'buy one, get one free' type-deal on Xbox's around Christmas time, meaning you'll be able to get your hand's on a big green blob for just £100.

Obviously Microsoft knows that an unsuccessful Christmas could pretty much kill the Xbox and make the prospective Xbox 2's job even harder come a couple of years. I guess it makes sense for them to write off big losses for the Xbox to get an established userbase for when the next console comes around.

Anyways, just a rumour but I thought it was worth posting if anyone's considering getting an Xbox anytime soon.. Might be worth your while to wait a few months.

 

[Hollywood Hasney]

Wow.... I mean they're already losing loads per XBox and that would lose even more...

On the plus side, I would get 2 XBoxes for sure

one to mod (So the one I have now is fine) and one to sell! (Brand new, never opened... £150

) if I pull that off, then XBox for £50

 

[mtxblau]

I don't understand what kind of purpose that would serve though. Why not buy an xbox and get 5-6 games of your choosing? Or pre bundle the DVD stuff? Seems a bit stupid.

 

[Hollywood Hasney]

Originally posted by MTXBlau@Aug. 15 2002, 9:53 pm

I don't understand what kind of purpose that would serve though. Why not buy an xbox and get 5-6 games of your choosing? Or pre bundle the DVD stuff? Seems a bit stupid.

If it is true... (highly doubting) but MS want more penetration in the market.

Say 1 person wanted an XBox... to get one cheap, he would have to talk a mate into buying one too...

I think we'll see something similar, like 2 for £350 or something stupid like that

be great iof this turns out to be real though

 

[Myname]

Buy one get one free seems weird for consoles but who knows? If they lowered the price to it's equivalent (£100 and not much less than a Gamecube) temporarily over Christmas they'd be making the same loss, but probably getting less Xbox's into people's houses than if you had to buy two.

 

[mercatfat]

There's no way MS would do something like that. If there is a buy one get one free, it'd be on games.

 

[Myname]

I think it'd be a decent strategy to be honest. Having the offer on games would have no purpose at all, but getting a broader userbase would be beneficial to them in the long run.

Everyone knows companies make a big loss on consoles anyways and make their money off the games. Their reasoning might be that the more Xbox's are in people's houses, the more games they're going to sell and recoup some of their loss.

It's been said many times that Microsoft will probably be willing and able to throw away huge amounts of cash in the short term if it means long term domination of the market. Spending money to make money isn't exactly the most advanced business concept in the world, but it is one of the most sucessful.

Just being devil's advocate here

 

[Quadriflax]

If it's true I'll be the first in line. But forgive me if I don't hold my breath.

 

[klakalou]

this sounds so stupid.

 

[Link Hylia]

good for the consumer, buy 2 Xboxes and sell the extra one, making it almost free.

I still don't see why, though, not a whole lot of people would buy a Xbox for someone else.

looks like Xbox is a miserable failure, in Microsoft's mind. so they are trying to unload all the xboxes they can, to get some money back (sony is richer than MS)

They can't seem to grasp the concept of games. if a system has games, people will buy it, if not, few people will.

games sell the system (would you buy a console with no games?)

thus, make better and more games, to improve sales of the console. Gamecube, for example, Super Monkey Ball, Resident Evil, and new Mario Sunshine, all have sold quite a few GCN consoles. (don't forget, MS tried to bribe N into quitting the next gen market)

 

[antime]

Originally posted by Link Hylia@Aug. 17 2002, 2:32 pm

I still don't see why, though, not a whole lot of people would buy a Xbox for someone else.

So Microsoft can boast massively inflated sales numbers. Here are some recent sales figures from the Financial Times which if accurate would give them incentive to do so.