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Recently Microsoft announced an official price cut across their Xbox 360 SKU’s, while MS themselves claimed it was a positive action as they held on for so long without price cutting, a marketer has come forward to say that the price has a number of downsides. Firstly it implies the product is losing added value, it indicates to competitors that sales are not as good as expected, MS has to compensate for the retail stock and suggest a new product is coming soon. One could easily argue that all of these points are applicable to the Xbox 360, and that with Halo 3 and the introduction of the Elite, was the price cut kicked in at the WRONG time by MS?

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Analysis: As a marketer, the last thing you tell your management to do is to cut price of your product. Despite the expected generated sales increase, it might generate more downsides that expected:

- Your product is losing added value
- You give the market a signal your sales might not be as good as expected
- You have to compensate for the retail stock
- It might announce a new product coming soon

In addition to those points, the timing of such a price cut is extremely critical. While some of us could agree a price cut for the back to school season is a good idea, some others will argue it was not needed because of the future Halo 3 release and the recent Elite version announcement.

Cutting the xBox prices drives more negative attention than expected. Sony PS3 is still more expensive and suffering from sales issues and Nintendo Wii still leads the market. This price cut will not have a significant impact to change it.

News Source: glgroup.com

Internet reports indicate that the Sony owned SecuROM protection used in Bioshock comes complete with a rootkit for the Bioshock installation on BOTH the demo and full retail version of the game. Understandably this has angered a lot of gamers.

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BioShock is undoubtedly a critical darling, but it’s not without its share of technical woes. 2K Games is already on the ball with the widescreen field of view “issue,” and has even slackened activation requirements, allowing for up to five SecuROM activations per copy of BioShock. Unfortunately, activation problems go deeper than that, since the Sony-owned SecuROM has deemed it necessary to pack in a rootkit with the BioShock installation, both for registered versions of the game and, inexplicably, the demo. We would’ve hoped 2K games chose its DRM provider carefully, and screened for such shenanigans, but Sony’s SecuROM really has no excuse, since we’ve certainly been down this path before.

News Source: Engadget

The Xbox 360 may have been THRASHED by the Wii in terms of monthly unit sales during July in USA, but MS are claiming some form of victory as they revealed consumer expenditure on the Xbox 360 is two to one compared to the PS3 and Wii.

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Microsoft states in the announcement that 360 consumers have generated $2.7 billion in revenue since November of 2006, comparing favorably to the $1.7 billion generated by the Wii and the $1.3 billion by the PS3 in the same period. Microsoft pointed out that the top selling game for July was the Xbox 360 version of NCAA Football 08, and that this version outsold the PS3 and the PS2 versions of the same game, combined.

Microsoft has also added some statistics of its own, stating that sales for the month were up 24% year-over-year for 360 software. They also stated that the console’s accessory attach rate is no 3.3, and the software attach rate is 6.2.

News Source: Next-Gen.biz