MS increases Arcade 360 price in UK News

When the pound is weak, prices go up, when it's strong, they stay the same. Are there really enough people fooled by this to disrespect us with such painfully transparent lies?

Well, that's crap.

Pretty shitty really, Arcade bundle will be over priced unless they stick a hard drive in with it.

Don't MS know that this is supposed to be the time when prices get cut?

@ Rubarack - well said. The UK gets price gouged when the pound is strong and then they put prices up when it's weak. It's a bullshit excuse.

Silly, silly MS. I cannot think of a single example of this happening in any other retail sector without improving the quality of the package available, let alone removing features (ie the free games).

Not good news for me as my current one has a knackered disk drive. Was going to be picking a new one up in a few months. I'll have to make it sooner now :(

@Rubarack,

While I am not happy about the increase, it would be unfair not to mention that Microsoft has been consistently selling the various 360 SKU's in the UK for cheaper than America for some time now.

This is not something the other platform holders can claim.

Personally, I am surprised that it's taken MS so long to bring the UK price up.

Ninty did this, now MS. will sony follow? Although they have been rummoured to be having a price drop with the slim console.

RodHull: Check out price trends of TVs, amplifiers and other AV equpment, and any other electrical item sourced in the eurozone. Prices have all gone up in the last 6 months due to the weak pound.

It's simple economics really. Regardless of whether they are quicker to raise prices than drop them, the fact is the exchange rate is costing these companies thousands of pounds.

Bit of a joke really. How do they expect people to purchase something for £30 more than what it used to cost, with fewer features? It makes no sense on any level.

What Rubarack said.

Handily removes Arcades from impulse-purchase territory too. I bought Mrs Retroid's 60gb Pro for £150. I'd far rather they'd killed the Arcade off and slapped the 60gb Pro in its place.

In this retail climate, this is a very stupid decision.

"Ninty did this, now MS. will sony follow? Although they have been rummoured to be having a price drop with the slim console. "

If I was Mr Sony, now would be the perfect time for a main console price reduction.

Maybe they announce to stick a hard disk in it (eg Premium going Arcade) on gamescom? Else, the price up is a bit steep, isn't it?

Lovely, I feel like such a valued customer....

@siro, thats one possible reasoning, but if they do have those details it seems rather stupid by their PR dept to not get them out as soon as the price rise was confirmed.

Wasn't it only last week that the "MS to cut prices to head off PS3 Slim" stories were doing the rounds?

I can understand the price increase. Its shitty but I can.

But the least they could have done is thrown in an extra game in the bundle and not remove the ones already included. Or maybe throw in some MS points/XBL gold subs into the deal to soften the blow. Thats the really shitty part of the equation for me.

The five XBLA games will no longer be included in the bundle, either.

I assume it will be renamed then. There's only so much salt a wound can take.

Using Amazon (com/fr)

Arcade $199
Pro 239 euros
Elite $399 298.6 euros

Not including sales taxes for the states, and assuming the current exchange rate:

Arcade £122 (+VAT = £143)
Elite £245 (+VAT = £288)

And from euros
Pro £206
Elite £260

We currently have the elite at £220, and the arcade at £135. Makes the current Elite look a bargain, though I'm not so sure about the increase in price in the Arcade.

Who's going to pay £160 for a 360 without a HDD? I'm pretty sure I paid less than that for my 20GB Premium, 18 months ago!

So we're basically going to be left with two options:
£160 for the Arcade
£230 for the Elite.

This is very aggressive\stupid behaviour from M$ I have to say. No-one wants a console without a HDD, but most could probably get by with 20GB (certainly 60GB). By removing the Premium option you're forcing people to buy the top-tier model. I can't help but think they're pricing a lot of people out of the market with that.

Not to mention that if Sony reduce their prices slightly, you could get an entry-level PS3 for not much more than the Elite. Could be a big own-goal!

BabyJesus - Siro may be right (Hope so, but doubt it). Remember this was from a message to retailers and NOT to the general public.

We should probably hold off from jumping on this too much as there may easily be an extra bit of info that we are currently missing.
No point bitching about it till we have all the fully confirmed facts.

I wonder what the best selling model of the machine is?

@Firemonkey, true enough.

There has got to be something up their sleeve with this being gamescom week and all, so maybe there is more to this.

Well, you could also see this the other way around. Why do people in the UK pay less for a 360 then people on mainland europe?

Not that I mind, I just import everything from the UK right now >:) Well not a 360 game console anymore :P

BabyJesus - I really hope so, as my kids just knackered up the drive of my current 360 (which was a RROD replacement)

I just buy everything in the UK because you guys are cheaper than mainland Euro with the weak pound. I was hoping your shops would take beads and shiny pieces of glass soon ;)

The increase will be in 720p though, so it's not all bad.

@Crovax20,

Indeed. Currently UK'ers pay less for the various 360 models than both EU and US customers.

I would say that we have been fortunate for this last 9-12 months that MS chose to try and ride out the exchange-rate storm. They could have followed both Nintendo and Sony, which charge more to UK'ers than those other markets.

oh.. cool.
(that was a sarcastic oh cool by the way)

The Arcade was £130/$200 which was pretty representative of the buying power of each currency. If we'd been getting benefit from the strong pound it would have been £100. Now, while I'd like to see us benefit from the strong pound it's not really how markets work, prices are generally set at what people will pay for them. But if you're pricing on what people are prepared to pay it doesn't make sense to hike prices up in the middle of a recession.

I reckon they'll announce a 20gb or something hard drive with the new "arcade" at Gamescom as their counter to the PS3 Slim. Could explain the price increase and removal of XBLA games.

Maybe they might start packing HDDs into the arcades?

@Rubarack

you are right man. but punish the companies by not buying their product instead of going out and buying it anyway, but griping at the same time not talking about you ofc but about every day joe)

Still about 1/2 the price of its competition so I dont think MS have too much to worry about on this one.

Wow, so they are trying to not hemorrhage as much money from that division finally.

Seems crazy to me to make things more expensive during an economic recession? Surely Microsoft need to be stimulating sales not putting people off? :?

A console price increase? A first for our industry, surely?

They were doing so well but welcome to the third place if the PS3 slim does release at anything less than about £260.

They don't have the brand to get away with this like Nintendo. Bonkers.

The only way this would make sense is to include and HDD and basically have the Arcade replace the pro, losing the bottom model - maybe recongition that an HDD is needed now.

The cynical part of me says this is nothing to do with foreign exchange mechanism, and everything to do with providing price-point latitude this Christmas.

When the inevitable PS3 price-drop comes, I can imagine Microsoft wanting to be able to say "Hey we can drop our prices too".

Hardware sales are pretty flat right now, so I don't imagine this affecting sales terribly much.

But, if a price-war breaks out, this means Microsoft have one in the chamber...

"But, if a price-war breaks out, this means Microsoft have one in the chamber... "

Only for customers who have lost their short term memories.

Are we suggesting that the price increase is so that they can then announce a price cut back to the same amount in 6 weeks time... and nobody will notice what has really happened? Oooookay.

The 360 is profitable MS dont need to make any losses on the hardware, they are more than happy to sell lots of games to the current userbase then next xmas introduce the Natal bundle


they could also announce the HDD included int he arcade next week

Ouch - I just ordered an 360 Arcade for my dad this morning (he wants to play Call of Juarez: BiB of all things) - was going to hang around until the end of the month for the alleged "price drop", rather glad I didn't piss about now :)

Seems silly to me especially if as expected the PS3 will have a price cut.

Maybe they are discontinuing the arcade and are trying to make it look less attractive as a value proposition whilst not losing the face of discontinuing it all together?

..and everyone thought that by removing the Premium, MS were going to drop the Elite into it's place. Turns out they are removing the Premium and increasing the price of the Arcade to replace it instead.

These exchange rate arguments bore me. We've paid more for virtually everything in the electronics industry for countless years. Many European nations have higher VAT than we do and they often still end up paying less. The UK is often last in the line for release dates as well, meaning not only do we pay more, we have to wait longer.

Maybe the Arcade was for once a 'fair' deal for us over recent months, it makes a change after paying over the odds for countless years. We were shafted on Steam for quite some time and that's digital distribution, they don't even have the excuse of physical distribution. Not that physical distribution is even an excuse either, the software can be sent over the internet at worst, or on a master disk via plane to a localised production facility. The hardware is all made in China/Asia and all of it has to be shipped around the world, I doubt it's that much cheaper to ship it to NA than it is to Europe.

Checking Amazon quickly we have these current prices for the 360 Arcade (I'm aware they will change and Amazon may not be the cheapest, but it's a stable comparison):

UK - £134.99 ($220.32 €156.42)
US - $199.99 (£122.55 €142.04)
EU - €179.95 ($253.37 £155.19)
UK (new) - £159.99 ($261.03 €185.44)

It's clear that Europe gets the biggest shaft here, but the UK is also shafted compared to the US. You could argue that Europe is shafted because of 'localisation', lots of different languages to cater for, although I expect things like the manual are already in 15 languages. However, this 'excuse' loses all it's weight once you see the price increase. UK residents will now be expected to pay more than anyone else in the world for the same product, despite less localisation requirements than their European brethren.

Unfortunately, muppets will still purchase these consoles in droves and I don't see this increase suddenly putting a halt on the 360's sales figures. A lot of people purchasing these things don't have a clue about the differences between the systems, they only know what in-store staff tell them and that is routinely a load of inaudible crap anyway. Mums will still buy them for their children and most of the savvy gamers already have whatever console they prefer anyway.

I didn't buy any of the 'new' consoles, they all seemed like full-on money grabbing crap at the time each of them came out and they still do. Stupid prices for 'DLC', ridiculous usage of fixed 'points' systems which are as bad as the Oyster card in terms of prepay 'scams'. Made worse by the fact that you can't really buy the amount of points you want and the amounts you can purchase don't match up very well with the price of content.

To the Euro's that complain about us having it cheaper than you; you are certainly correct and within your rights to do so, but really both of us should join forces and complain against the continuous price-shafting we receive from the electronics industry in the first place. Having to pay €180 for the Arcade is ridiculous given what other countries are paying.

I wonder why they don't raise the price in America, since after these changes all of Europe will be paying over $50 more for the same product. MS could be getting $250 for the same console if they raised prices and they could use the old exchange rate excuse!

Longest comment ever but not entirely useless I think!

Arse.

I used to feel secure in the knowledge that when my pleasefixme goes tits - I could pick up a replacement as an impulse buy.

Very strange message to be sending during a recession.

/admires barrel as MS savagely bums.

Well the most the Elite will drop to now is £199.99. If Sony do a mass clearout of 80gb n release the supposed PS3 slim at £229.99 then MS could be in trouble imo