High Street Cuts Xbox 360 Memory Cost

[wraggster]

It’s been revealed today, in a not unprecedented move from the High Street and online retailer, that Argos has slashed the retail price of Xbox 360 storage devices, most notably the Xbox 360’s 120GB Hard-Disk Drive (HDD) accessory. Previously retailing for the already competitive price of £87.99, Argos has today lowered their price to only £67.99.

Unsurprisingly, the reduction in price appears to be going down well amongst consumers, as when Electronic Theatre contacted a dozen Argos stores it was discovered that each had remaining stock, but only a single unit. However, it was also brought to our attention that the Xbox 360 Guitar Controller that originally came bundled with Guitar Hero II was available at the extremely low price of £9.99.

Electronic Theatre contacted several High Street and online retailers to ask whether they intend to follow suit. While a handful respectfully declined to comment and a few others stated they had a similar reduction planned, but were not currently willing to discuss their future promotions, Curry’s willing suggested that although the product isn’t offered at a competitive price either online or in-store, they would be willing to honour their “Price Promise” promotion, under which consumers would not only receive the product at the same price as a High Street competitor, but also receive a further 10% price reduction, upon providing proof of the competitor’s lower retail price. This promotion is also available for seven days after initial purchase, so anyone having purchased an Xbox 360 120GB HDD for more than £67.99 from Curry’s in the past few days would be wise to head back to the store.

Argos famously slashed the price of the GameCube soon after launch to only £79.99, which saw sales skyrocket past the PlayStation2 – at that time the sales leader for the console generation – and the company decide to u-turn on its decision to no longer stock the console. This move was, however, a force of Nintendo’s hand for an official price reduction, which undoubtedly damaged the system’s reputation early in its life cycle.

With the news today that Microsoft has upped the memory capacity on-board Xbox 360 Arcade consoles in the US and Japan coupled with today’s High Street retail reduction, a significant drop in consumer cost for videogame memory could well been on the way. Electronic Theatre will keep you updated.

http://www.electronictheatre.co.uk/i...60-memory-cost

[benn]

360 memory storage is still OUTRAGEOUSLY expensive. for a HDD the same size and cost I could get a 500MB to 1TB portable drive for my PC.
£67.99 is still about £30 more than I would grudgingly accept to pay. It's a con.