mrklaw said:
dropping the core and releasing a $480 sku is effectively raising the price, just when they need to drop the price.
Technically yes, but it ain't that simple. We'd need to know what the allocations and sales have been of the current SKU's.
Assuming the core has sold in the minority, and of that minority, sales of the HDD have been strong - then I can see the case for MS doing this. Basically, if the core sans HDD hasn't been attracting consumers, what's the point in keeping it around? People considering the 360 are already assuming the price is $399.
The premium being price reduced is a drop in price, plus they are offering a new deluxe package. Certainly they could price reduce the core and keep it around, but if it hasn't been selling - why offer 3 SKUs?
And I can't see how anyone can defend the value of a $480 360 with HDMI and bigger HDD. You can already stream from your media centre to 360, so why do you need 120GB? Just for MS's proprietary movies service? So you're paying more to allow you to pay more again for the movies?
Not everyone has a media center PC. IIRC, MS doesn't sell the OS separately, so you can't assume everyone has purchased a PC with that OS.
And the HDMI is irrelevant. 360 can output over VGA with upscaling of DVDs, or 1080p over component should you care much. It doesn't make any real difference to people unless you have a HDDVD drive built in
It's relevant because the vast majority of 1080p TV's do NOT support 1080p over VGA or Component.
All it does is make the core PS3 look like it isn't *that* expensive - hey, bluray player for $20 more! And makes people who constantly and annoying scream 'PS3 is too expensive' look a little silly when they're also shouting $480 360 is a bargain
I agree it is silly for the people to talk out of both sides of their mouth.
