xbox games

[LeHah]

GameStop is selling Xbox 180s for $50, which seems pretty steep... I also don't believe there are any spectacularly rare games, either.

The thing is this - I want to know why a *used* copy of Jedi Academy for Xbox is still $30. I cannot figure this out for the life of me.

 

[ChrisReid]

GameStop is selling Xbox 180s for $50, which seems pretty steep. I think supply outstrips demand by an order of magnitude (for GameCubes, too).

I agree. It's kind of near a price floor unfortunately. In order to make the selling of used systems worth their time (testing & cleaning them up, dealing with defective returns, etc), they want to make a certain profit... say $20-25. And then they also need to offer enough trade-in credit to consumers to make it worth their while to haul in their old xboxes. That's probably around $20-25. So no matter how old or how much excess supply is out there, you won't see them drop much in price until GameStop decides they no longer want to carry the system and sells them at clearance prices.

 

[ELTEE]

Anyhow, new PS2s are under $100, and if you're going that route, it's cheaper to go with the $400 PS3 and PS2 than the $500+ bundle, unless you want the game. And PS2 games are still coming out. Unlike the Xbox, where Microsoft laid out a timeline after which no more Xbox games will be made and basically ended Xbox games (everyone migrates to the Xbox360), the PS2 is still a money maker for Sony. Heck, Sony will probably keep making PS2s until the PS4 starts getting finalized (like they did with the PSX - that thing was still being made as the PSOne until a few years ago!).

Ignorantly, I had no idea there was that much internal componentry required for the PS3 to play older games. I can absolutely see the business case for Sony that required eliminating the extra features. Still, it is too bad that supporting older equipment necessitates such an increase in resources in the first place.

 

[Bandit LOAF]

Ignorantly, I had no idea there was that much internal componentry required for the PS3 to play older games. I can absolutely see the business case for Sony that required eliminating the extra features. Still, it is too bad that supporting older equipment necessitates such an increase in resources in the first place.

I do think this was a terrible decision - it certainly delayed my owning a PS3 for about a year and has completely turned off several people I know.

I know PS3s are supposedly very expensive to built, but I'm betting this decision had more (if not everything) to do with Sony's unexpectedly high sales numbers for the PS2 itself during the PS3's debut quarter. I think the "PS2 outsells PS3" stories that were thrown around in the press first embarassed and then put dollar signs in their eyes. They should have dropped the wireless, the card readers, the extra USB ports, the bluetooth and any plans to develop the beyond-awful 'Home' Massively Whatever Nothing before they decided to make their console *not* able to play the largest and most popular gaming library in history. It was a weird, weird choice.

(And in fact, can PS2 guts be *that* expensive? If Sony is turning a profit selling entire PS2s with controllers and memory and casings and packaging and everything for less than a hundred dollars then the particular parts that have to transition over for a PS3 can't be made of solid gold.)

 

[Worf]

PS2 parts aren't expensive, but every little bit counts. A few dollars worth of parts removed over a million units is a few million dollars saved. And a bit more because it's less inventory to track, less parts to assemble, etc.

I suppose the big reason is that Sony still sells plenty of PS2s, and its relative cheapness is still making the PS2 the leader on console sellers. Might as well continue selling them, then sell PS3s beside them, and let people worry about the multiple connections they need.

The PS3 was supposed to have a number of other features as well (2 HDMI ports, 3 Gigabit Ethernet ports, ...) but those were stripped...

 

[LeHah]

Note to self: Buy new PS2 just in case.

I got one the day they came out - sat outside a Walmart with friends for the whole night, unplugged their soda machines and used their electricity to watch movies - and the system still works great. However, I have a ton of PS2 games that I love to play and it would be a real shame to not be able to play them.