Don


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yeah but i only had to buy one 360 in 3 years, how often do you need to update your AWESOME video card to keep it AWESOME?

I've had the same video card for the last 3 years. 8800 GTS, it's still fast enough for me.

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It isn't ridiculous at all. In fact, it makes perfect sense. Sony's business model is different than Microsoft's business model. Sony supports the use of third-party hard drives which is why they don't sell any separately. I mean, why would they? If someone wants a bigger hard drive for their PS3, they'll buy one and replace the one it came with.

Yeah a 120GB for $150 makes perfect sense.

Anyone defending the sort of prices MS slap on the hard drive or wireless adapter provide good laughs.

The controller is an example of an accessory making profit, but priced "fairly" under the category of "console manufacturer need to make money back lost from hardware sales". Except Nintendo, their controller price once you buy all three parts is a total kick in the balls.

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Isn't this about memory cards not hard drives? :blink: The term used was Memory Unit, which when you do a search, comes up with different memory cards.

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Yeah a 120GB for $150 makes perfect sense.

Anyone defending the sort of prices MS slap on the hard drive or wireless adapter provide good laughs.

The controller is an example of an accessory making profit, but priced "fairly" under the category of "console manufacturer need to make money back lost from hardware sales". Except Nintendo, their controller price once you buy all three parts is a total kick in the balls.

Oh no, that's not what I meant - and I'm in no way defending Microsoft's business decisions. I was simply trying to say it made sense from a business perspective. Don't allow customers to use third-party hard drives and sell pseudo-proprietary hard drives at insane prices. It equates to a lot of profit for Microsoft for each hard drive that's sold.

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I guess some of you missed the part where I said that retailers get most of the profit from those "insanely" priced accessories, huh? The systems and the games give the retailers very very little profit at all, the only real profits they see is from that $80 Wifi adaptor you buy, or that $150 HDD. It's part of the business model. You could say the controllers or memory cards are priced fair, at $30, but that's all relative. $30 for a old 8MB Sony PS2 memory card is cheap? Hardly when it probably cost then $2 to make in total.

Same thing with todays parts. There is also another reason the HDD itself is still priced high, they'd much rather you buy a system with one already than the cheaper arcade without one.

You might think it's funny defending the pricey model they have going, and that's fine, I hope you don't choke though.

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I guess some of you missed the part where I said that retailers get most of the profit from those "insanely" priced accessories, huh? The systems and the games give the retailers very very little profit at all, the only real profits they see is from that $80 Wifi adaptor you buy, or that $150 HDD. It's part of the business model. You could say the controllers or memory cards are priced fair, at $30, but that's all relative. $30 for a old 8MB Sony PS2 memory card is cheap? Hardly when it probably cost then $2 to make in total.

Same thing with todays parts. There is also another reason the HDD itself is still priced high, they'd much rather you buy a system with one already than the cheaper arcade without one.

You might think it's funny defending the pricey model they have going, and that's fine, I hope you don't choke though.

You can make profit and not extortionately screw people over, the issue MS have is when they're charging $150 for a 120GB drive and Sony lets people use their own drives it looks bad. And yeah WiFi isn't a necessity, but when your competition includes it as standard but you see it as a $100 premium, it looks bad again.

If everyone was charging over the top costs for hard drives like everyone did for memory cards your business lesson might have a little more validity.

Knock the wireless adapter down to $50-60, and hard drive to $79-99, and you're still charging more than any respected similar piece of hardware on the market, but it lets you make some profit that always gets made on console accessories.

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From Microsofts point of view, if the hard drive and wifi accessories are selling at a rate which pleases them why change? I could understand if they weren't selling but they must be if the ridiculous pricing remains the same. Time will tell if the all in one PS3 package beats the 360 most months and Microsoft could react by chucking built in wifi into the console, lowering hard drive prices for example to stay competitive if that's a market problem. Their hand needs to be forced and right now it isn't.

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I love reading all of your replies on this topic and I hope to god that my HDD does not get bricked. I have almost all of my arcade games installed and a few of my frequently played games.

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You can make profit and not extortionately screw people over, the issue MS have is when they're charging $150 for a 120GB drive and Sony lets people use their own drives it looks bad. And yeah WiFi isn't a necessity, but when your competition includes it as standard but you see it as a $100 premium, it looks bad again.

If everyone was charging over the top costs for hard drives like everyone did for memory cards your business lesson might have a little more validity.

Knock the wireless adapter down to $50-60, and hard drive to $79-99, and you're still charging more than any respected similar piece of hardware on the market, but it lets you make some profit that always gets made on console accessories.

The business lesson is valid, you just don't agree with it, that is a different mater altogether. MS keeps the price on such things like the HDD which is a key selling point for the premium and the elite over the arcade. It's very clear they'd rather have you buy one of the ones with a HDD already then the cheaper arcade. When looking at the difference and seeing how it's cheaper to just buy it with one than buying it after for $150, the sale choice is a given.

The $150 tag, as I've said, serves two purposes, make money for retails and push people into buying a SKU with one already vs a arcade and a HDD later.

The setup works, if it didn't MS would've changed it. That's not to say they won't, I full expect to see the bigger 250GB HDDs come in and replace the 120GB's at some point next year.

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The business lesson is valid, you just don't agree with it, that is a different mater altogether. MS keeps the price on such things like the HDD which is a key selling point for the premium and the elite over the arcade. It's very clear they'd rather have you buy one of the ones with a HDD already then the cheaper arcade. When looking at the difference and seeing how it's cheaper to just buy it with one than buying it after for $150, the sale choice is a given.

The $150 tag, as I've said, serves two purposes, make money for retails and push people into buying a SKU with one already vs a arcade and a HDD later.

The setup works, if it didn't MS would've changed it. That's not to say they won't, I full expect to see the bigger 250GB HDDs come in and replace the 120GB's at some point next year.

I think you're forgetting a lot of people bought a 60GB pro before a 120GB elite was even available, and even when the elite came about people still bought a pro as the elite itself IMO was a rip off (same price as a PS3 just because it's black and had 60GB more space).

MS then introduced game installs, made a fuss about it, yeah because it's a nice feature, but still shafted everyone sitting with a 60GB drive with only the option of a $150 120GB drive.

So it's not just people with an arcade getting stung because they cheaped out on the initial investment.

You also now have games on demand and MS are still choke holding everyone on prices. It's their loss if people go to modding or don't use services like games on demand because they have no hard drive space.

For a console with so many digital services you'd of thought they'd want to sell the hard drives cheap and make almost pure profit from their marketplace sales... Marketplace sales are 'uncapped', trying to make front loaded profit on the hard drives is capped.

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I think you're forgetting a lot of people bought a 60GB pro before a 120GB elite was even available, and even when the elite came about people still bought a pro as the elite itself IMO was a rip off (same price as a PS3 just because it's black and had 60GB more space).

MS then introduced game installs, made a fuss about it, yeah because it's a nice feature, but still shafted everyone sitting with a 60GB drive with only the option of a $150 120GB drive.

So it's not just people with an arcade getting stung because they cheaped out on the initial investment.

You also now have games on demand and MS are still choke holding everyone on prices. It's their loss if people go to modding or don't use services like games on demand because they have no hard drive space.

For a console with so many digital services you'd of thought they'd want to sell the hard drives cheap and make almost pure profit from their marketplace sales... Marketplace sales are 'uncapped', trying to make front loaded profit on the hard drives is capped.

You're bringing other things into this now though. Even from the start, when it was just the 20GB on sale, it also had that crazy $99 price tag. Way before the elite and the 60GB and the 120GB. When it was just a matter of core and premium, the choice was simple if you cared at all about going online. That's what they wanted people to think about and to buy the one with a HDD already.

It's not like I agree with the higher price, dunno if you think I do, it's that it has a valid business reason for being priced high, and it's not just for pure profit only.

Game installs are optional for the most part, and Games on demand can be deleted and redownloaded as well. While it's true that they'd be better off making the money on the marketplace side, marketplace shafts their retail partners in the end.

And as much as I hate going around in circles with you, let me just say this one last time before I put this to rest on my end. Accessories are where retailers make most of their profit from!

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dont like this move... i hope these accesories (hardrives, natal, wifi adaptors, steering wheels etc) will all be useable on the next xbox, if not then that is a joke and i will mock microsoft hard

and can we please get a ban on modded pads... its becoming a joke on cod5... cowards firing off svt rifles off faster than mp40's

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I dunno about harddrives but since the controllers and other things like the wifi adaptor are USB or wireless, no reason why they shouldn't work, unless MS goes full on greed mode.

I somehow doubt they will. The HDDs could be the except if they change the design and do what the PS3 does next time around.

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dont like this move... i hope these accesories (hardrives, natal, wifi adaptors, steering wheels etc) will all be useable on the next xbox, if not then that is a joke and i will mock microsoft hard

and can we please get a ban on modded pads... its becoming a joke on cod5... cowards firing off svt rifles off faster than mp40's

They won't charge for a hard drive next time around, both Sony and Nintendo use open storage solutions this generation, but both their consoles came later than the 360.

I doubt you'll be able to use the 360 hard drive caddy on the next Xbox, but you could always pry it open and take out your 120GB drive. Most likely the next console will ship with a minimum of 120GB though, probably higher.

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i don't really understand Microsoft's profit business tactics. Either they want profit from the hardware or from the software they can't really have both. I have a 20GB HDD and am not gonna pay 4 x times the cost of upgrading my PS3's HDD.

I say i don't understand their profit system because surely they would want to make a lot of money from DLC, games and movies. I would have thought they would cost the HDD at about break even or for just a little more, just so people upgrade and purchase more content from Xbox live, which is where the money really is. Sony understand this and have one of the best upgrade mechanisms ive seen.

I also don't understand how cheating can occur, isn't the data encrypted, does the PS3 suffer from cheating due to it's swapable hdd?

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i don't really understand Microsoft's profit business tactics. Either they want profit from the hardware or from the software they can't really have both. I have a 20GB HDD and am not gonna pay 4 x times the cost of upgrading my PS3's HDD.

I say i don't understand their profit system because surely they would want to make a lot of money from DLC, games and movies. I would have thought they would cost the HDD at about break even or for just a little more, just so people upgrade and purchase more content from Xbox live, which is where the money really is. Sony understand this and have one of the best upgrade mechanisms ive seen.

I also don't understand how cheating can occur, isn't the data encrypted, does the PS3 suffer from cheating due to it's swapable hdd?

PS3 is stricter than the 360, your hard drive will only work in your system, plug it into someone elses and it'll demand a format before proceeding.

Take it out and tamper with it on a PC and it will demand a format before booting as well.

Neither operating system has been compromised, only the 360 DVD drive. Cheating can't occur unless there is a glitch in a piece of external software, which is the game itself, nothing to do with the operating system/console. When that's the case it's up to the developers to fix which is why all the fuss about the COD4 hacks on the PS3 was hilarious, not to mention it ended up happening on 360 as well. IW patched it.

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^ That's what I'm saying, MS maybe hired bunch of dumm ass's for marketing and R&D. Also maybe they should get some ω while there're at it.

None of the comments you have said make any sense, including your rants on MajorNelson.com. You're whining because you didn't want to pay for a hard drive and now you run the risk of it being disabled. You took the risks, accept the possible consequences.

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I know sorry been on work since 3 pm yesterday. I would like you to know at least that I do have official 120 gig HDD, my problem was with the price; I paid $80 on eBay not that I am complaining but I don't like buying stuff like this thru eBay or craigslist.

I want and do support MS, but lately they're making so many bad decisions that It just gets me hyper (you know the feeling when someone does really dumb things). Telling MS to take pointers from Sony is like telling some old person to take advice from 10 year old kid.

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A bad decision is to protect your own product?

Not really, but considering the pricing it's like Monster trying to protect their HDMI cables :p

It is against the TOS though, so if MS do stop hard drives as well as memory cards, tough luck.

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