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"How Desperate are YOU MICROSOFT?????"

If you have not already read, Microsoft will be this Xmas'z bargain of a console. Microsoft are that desperate to sell their big black box, they are now offering two games, sega games Gran Turismo and Jet Set with the xbox all for £159.99. Meaning xbox is the cheapest console wround.

Now I can that desperation to sell.

Consider the facts what can you buy for £159.99:
Nice MP3 Player,
New Mini TV,
PS2,
Mini Hi-Fi System,
A holiday to somewhere nice,
or perhaps a Gamecube with one class game!

What else is next for the box?

da_1_n_only wrote:
> But how many months has it been out, and all those price drops.
> Basically Microsoft are paying more to develop the xbox than what it
> is selling at. Sony have the biggest Market Share as they have a head
> start, then Nintendo even though the Xbox came out before the Cube.

Sony sell their PS2 at a loss, I'm sure Nintendo do with their GC..

I remeber when Sony released their PS1 it was part of the sales pitch that the PS1 cost more to produce than it did to sell... That it was such hi-tec kit that it was'nt possible to re-sell and still make a profit, the idea I'd suppose is that customers would think they were getting a better deal?

Remember Wordperfect was 'the' wordprocessor of choice arcoss the board, that Netscape 'owned' the browser market.

Microsoft released Explorer pretty much immeadiatly after Bill Gates had stated that he thought the Internet was little more than a passing fad. It was openly mocked for being a repackaged Mosaic, a second rate browser...

Every market they break into will have its Sony or Netscape or Corel whomever the market leader is. It just seems to be a common move for them to get into the market and take it from their. They are learning from their mistakes, and from their competitors successes, they will learn fast. It may be that they don't really start to succeed until the end of the X-Box2's life cycle (previous history suggests it does take them a couple of goes to get it right).

But to write them off as desperate is a mistake that hopefully Sony wont make, from IBM to Corel to Netscape, exploiting the market leaders overconfidence seems to be Microsofts forte.

Armatige Shanks, well said. What you said is ture, but Microsoft they are known as Computer Developers, special for PC's.

But how many months has it been out, and all those price drops. Basically Microsoft are paying more to develop the xbox than what it is selling at. Sony have the biggest Market Share as they have a head start, then Nintendo even though the Xbox came out before the Cube.

I'm gonna paraphrase, cos it takes too long for me to keep tying the same thing out...

But MS's marketing strategy on the X-Box is excatly the smae marketing strategy they have used for everhthing else...

Internet Explorer was optenly mocked when it was first released, it took serveral versions of the software to be released before it made an impact, during which time Micrososft repeatedly lowered the price of the WWW software, before eventually giving it away for free....

Windows V.1 was a huge flop, it was'nt until ver.3 that anyone took any notice of it at all, at which point it switftly killed off all competition singlhandedly, most notably IBM's OS/2

MS Word was a second rate word processing package, though v.2 receved a great deal of critical success, it was a at the bottom of the ladder which was at the time headed by Wordperfect... On they release of Wordperfect6, they released Word6 (ignoring a few versions along the way) slashed the price, stole Wordperfects ideas and instantly became the dominant Word processor on the market.

Microsoft do make a lot of mistakes, their are a lot of quote floating around from Bill Gates and other MS employees that in retrospect seema little foolish. But their success history is unquestioned... Time and time again they enter a market they know nothing about, screw up a lot, learn from their mistakes, and then overcome the competition. The X-Box may not turn out to be Microsofts biggest success in the long run, but I suspect that it will be judged more as a sucess than a failure...

For an esoteric example, take these forums, when the X-Box was released PS2 owners blasteded it, Ninties blasted it, everyone on the forum hated Microsofts console, though somehow, despite being universially despised, it has developed a stron following, despite waiting until Christmas to release its next step of AAA titles, it has garnered respect, even from its most adament dejectors. Within a year its already shaken up as much of a storm within the industry as Sony did with its PS1 within the first 3+ years of its release. The X-Box has faced the biggest uphill struggle of any of the current consoles, but is still managing to hold its own.

I'm not an X-Box owner, but to write Microsoft off as desperate does seem foolih, they are aggressive, hungry and flexible, which in this business are required.

gamezfreak wrote:
> Its called buisness Da. MS are just promoting the console, Same as
> Nintendo and Sony.

Well its called business hey! Let me tell you all! I've been doing business for 2 years at secondary! And now at college.

Let me explain to you, this is Microsoft Xbox's Product Life Cycle, basically in a product life cycle there are 4 main stages,
-Introduction,
-Growth,
-Maturity,
-Decline,

Let me explain, In 2000/2001 the Xbox was introduced to the market, it was very new indeed! There was a very low cash flow at this point, a company has 2 choices on wat price plan to choose, either set price at low first or set it high. So Microsoft chose to set it high.

Next the product started growing, minths later many people had the xbox, competition is medium, profits are medium, Nintendo release cube!

Then comes the maturity stage, this is when the company is highest at the point of selling their product, with Halo out Xbox was selling so well. It was so high in sales, Its at its mature stage, there is so much competition at this stage from PS2 and Gamecube. Profits for Microsoft are high, they are getting more money.

But next is the decline stage, this is where the product goes down, now Microsoft or Mr Gates has to do something to stop them going down and declining. This is known as using 'extension strategies'.

Let me explain, this is the stage where the company do things to stop its product failing. Lets see what Microsoft done:
-Drop price after 6 months,
-Drop it again to be cheaper than PS2,
-They buy RARE! (Merging/Diversifying),
-Giving away 2 free games with Xbox,

How desperate is that, They set out more than 2 major extension strategies to stop the product declining!

So there you go 'gamezfreak', I really do think I know more than you in business. Yes it is promotion, promotion to save there product from declining.

gamezfreak wrote:
> Its called buisness Da. MS are just promoting the console, Same as
> Nintendo and Sony.

One major difference - Sony and Nintendo have successful marketing campaigns, whereas people are still sceptical about the Xbox. Which I don't mind at all.

nintendo could probably afford to drop to £99 for the cube and still make a profit.

Just Mr Gates master plan to get more of his box of multimedia into homes before christmas in order to sell more games so publishers will see it as a "worthy" system to release games for in order to make profit.

question is who will be next to drop their price: Sony or Nintendo?
and will a certain news paper do a huge spread on "Why the X box is this years must have toy for christmas"

Well the fact that it was launchd at £300 and has gone down to basically £80 if you take off the games in a matter of months does hint on a wee bit of desperation.

When Sony, MS, etc.. were selling their consoles for 299, people complained about everything being overpriced 'rip-off Britain'...

When console developers lower their prices, everyone complains that they are desperate...

Its called buisness Da. MS are just promoting the console, Same as Nintendo and Sony.