Microsoft expands $99 Xbox 360 with contract offer

This is massively, enormously huge.
Making the Xbox a subscription product like a mobile phone is marketing brilliance. And it forces people onto Xbox Live, which is the real product here.
I see this as Microsoft doing two things 1) Shifting inventory in the product tail by using price elasticity of demand. 2) Getting on the learning curve for the launch of Xbox 720. MS have rolled this programme out slowly so as to iron out glitches. And if the 720 is $99 at launch they won't be able to make enough.

It is utterly amazing that Sony haven't latched on and done the same. They really seem to miss every boat these days.

Posted:7 months ago

Microsoft really need to look at the services it is trying to provide if they want to make this work, at the moment all they offer is stuff you can get access to elsewhere for free, they need to bring more content inside the xbox brand for this to work, if say it had a Sky or Netflix service included it starts to make more sense. Mobile Phone contracts work because people already pay their phone bill and see a phone upgrade as reward for being loyal, for this to work they need to provide a service people want or already have by another provider with the console being the incentive to switch.

As it is, I hope this is more about a singular xbox profile accross multiple platforms than will result in games I bought digitally for 360 being available on the NextXbox.

Posted:7 months ago

People keep saying this is a bad move and expensive but realistically, it enables them to penetrate and get sales from a huge audience who cannot pay $250 up front. Over the 2 year period it works out an extra $100 which is like paying $4 interest a month - much less than lower socio-economic groups would be paying if they borrowed the money or part purchased the machine. It also enables MS to massively lowball the competition but actually make more money per unit than their competitors. Microsoft have the highest attachment rate in the business, their biggest obstacle is getting the machine in peoples homes - this is a big step to solving it.

Wonder when the package with their tablet comes out ;)

Posted:7 months ago

For the here and now, it's a GREAT X-mas present, but the long term... It'll cost you a little more than it's worth if you look at the big picture. I dunno, maybe with good execution, it'll reward them in the end. Might get one myself...

Posted:7 months ago