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This week's price cuts are too little too late to save the Xbox 360, says Nathan Taylor. The 360 glory days may be over, with only Fable 2 up its sleeve and Blu-Ray scoring wins for the PS3.

Microsoft has a lot to worry about these days. It’s frustrated by it’s inability to crack Google, or buy anybody else who might; people are hating Vista, and the life of Windows XP keeps getting extended; it’s actually having to compete with Linux on the desktop, and now on the mobile as well; and it’s console, once the market leader, seems to be slowly fading away.

Its latest announcement is clearly designed to stave off the latter. It may be too little too late, but Microsoft just announced a new round of price cuts for the Xbox 360, making the cheapest version of the console, the hard disk-less Arcade, $50 cheaper than the Wii.

It’s now just $349, half the price of the PlayStation 3, and some retailers are selling it for considerably less than that. The 20GB version of the Xbox 360 has also been cut, from $579 to $499 and the 120GB Elite has dropped from $729 to $649. I don’t think it will be enough to save the Xbox 360.

It’s funny how this generation of game consoles panned out. Most analysts had figured that the PlayStation 3 would sell the most, followed by the Xbox 360, with the Nintendo Wii trailing up the rear. Turns out the opposite of that happened.

The Wii continues to dominate sales, the Xbox 360 has killed the PS3 in terms of market share (so far) and the PS3 proved too expensive for most buyers, especially before Blu-ray had officially won the format war. Of course, now that Blu-ray has won, and the PS3 remains the best and most affordable Blu-ray player on the market, sales of the PS3 are really starting to take off.

Now the Xbox 360 has a strong established user base and a very high attach rate compared to the other consoles (the attach rate is the number of games sold per console), but it’s struggling to maintain momentum, especially after it expended its big gun: Halo 3. It has Fable 2 coming out later this year, which should give it a boost, but apart from that the console has very little steam left.

I imagine that the Microsoft brain’s trust is already thinking about upping the announcement date of the next version of the Xbox 360.

They’re also probably thinking that their relentless focus on one-upping Sony with meaningless processor performance numbers was a mistake. Nintendo got in under that radar because it made gaming fun, and you can bet dollars to donuts that the next Xbox version will have a motion sensing controller and a host of family-friendly games, not just first person shooters.

Microsoft might also think about making more of Xbox Live, which has tremendous potential, but has been sadly left to lie fallow, especially in Australia and other non-US territories. In short, it's going to have to kick ass to make an impact on the next generation, and saying that the console has more power than a supercomputer just isn't going to cut it.

[naruto7]

the only way for the 360 to be better is if they have free xbox live

[dxc]

Originally Posted by naruto7 the only way for the 360 to be better is if they have free xbox live and free porn and free sex360.com and 0 rrrod'sssssss

sorry but the ps3 IS way extreme why u think it cost's more than a xBuck's666