If it was, MS wouldn't have to cut price of its buggy Xbox 360, which still costs more if you add up the HD-DVD drive and wireless adapter.

As far as the differences between US and Europe, it just makes sense to test a price cut in a specific market (be it Japan or the US) to see how customers react, before doing it worldwide.

They have nothing but contempt for their european market, vista pricing, xbox releases ... well no problem mr gates, that PS 3 will be the one i buy then since its better and cheaper!

In reply to "MS doesnt care about europe" - yep, you're quite right, they don't.

However, don't fool yourself into thinking that Sony care about Europe - they don't either.

Until a big new games console is designed and made in Europe I'm afraid us Europeans are always going to be stuck with late releases, missing out on exclusives, higher prices etc...

That's just the way it is.

Not.

Maybe if a European company could get its act together and produce a next-gen console, we could get better treatment?

Yes, I can see why they would test it first. I mean, you never know, there might be a demographic out there that says "Whoahh! Hey! I'm quite happy paying over the odds for my Xbox 360, don't you DARE make me pay less".

No US company cares about europe at the minute, the strong pound and the reasonably strong euro have been screwing the US for 6 months now, which explains the wild difference in the price of Adobe software for example UK price £1,429.98, US price $1,719.95, now based on the exchange rate that should be more like £ 859.98.

MS of course, have a monopoly so they can do what they like with vista... Which explains the mass european migration to OSX/Ubuntu. As far as Xbox is concerned, its probably a better policy to buy one of them than a PS3. If everyone who was to buy a PS3 bought an Xbox, microsoft would be out of business pretty damn quick as they loose muchos peso's on each one sold, and as long as you don't buy any games they're not recouping the cost elsewhere.

So you complain about MS' contempt for Europe but then tell us you'll instead buy a PS3 from the company that released their console here 5months later than the US, costs an even bigger proportional difference here than the US and that gave us the PS3 with ever more gimped backwards compatibility than the US?

As it stands the 360 costs far less than the PS3, has a far greater range of current and upcoming games and has a vastly better online service. Not to mention that there's more people playing on XBox live than there are PS3 owners altogether.

Complaining about MS hating Europe then jumping to Sony is laughable at best.

anyone noticed that while other consoles seem to have a slow lingering death with its titles going into cut price stores, and new releases being on bargain, none of this seems to have happened for the original xbox.....

All releases seemed to just dry up, as though software companies, even bargain ones, were told not to release anything for it.... maybe to boost sales of 360s ?

maybe 'if you release anything (xbox) after xx/xx/xx you wont get to sell titles for the 360''

If thats the case, why should I buy another console form a company who has deliberately seen to the death of my current one?

Xbox has a better record in Europe than PlayStation does in fairness to Microsoft. Sony were the ones that showed nothing but contempt by delaying the console 6 months, charging ridiculous amounts of money using the 1-1 dollar-pound ratio and providing an inferior product to the ones in Japan and America.

If anything they are just as bad as each other really.

Both a Fire Sale and The Final Countdown in one thread! What a dream!

My two questions are, first, is there a European-based electronics designer who could even think about breaking into the console market? Most are either Japanese or Microsoft.

Secondly, if the aforementioned European company got in the act, do you think it would be cheaper? The cost of R+D would probably be 10 times higher here, as well as wages/labour + material costs. And then production would probably take place in China, at least if we wanted it at a decent price.

And it would probably be typically British, with a cheesy name and cheesy games!

Maybe Nokia?

To the person who said that Sony used the "1-1 dollar-pound ratio"...

$600 US

£425 UK

Agreed, it's still not right, but it ain't one to one...

"They are getting rid of the unreliable 90nm ones, in preparation for the possible reliable 65nm ones next year."

Wrong. The heat related - reliability issues are solely down to the misaligned thermal pads on the heatsink and the quality of the paste itself which degrades over time.

I know it is off topic but,, $600 US?

Try USD499 Vs GBP399 (prices taken from amazon.com and amazon.co.uk)

To be fair the UK version includes (on amazon at least) a free second controller, free HDMI cable and two free games (from a very limited selection), which is arguably worth £108.

Still not buying a Sony or Xbox until the rip off UK price hiking stops. Got a WII though, and it's great fun.

I know it's starting to get off-topic, but reading the few topics speculating about a European gaming console, I can't help throwing in speculations of my own.

Nokia took such a beating with the N-Gage, that I don't think they're not about to try again anytime soon.

Seeing how important it is to have exclusive games, I'm thinking video game developpers could be quite succesful. Atari is now a French company and I think the many nostalgics of the Atari VCS would jump on the opportunity to get a nextgen console with the Atari logo on it... and maybe some woodgrain?

"To be fair the UK version includes (on amazon at least) a free second controller, free HDMI cable and two free games (from a very limited selection), which is arguably worth £108."

Forgive me for being petty, but charging more for something that includes "FREE" items, that one that doesn't, strikes me as not being particularly free..

i think 2 justify console cost y cant they reduce software and peripheral prices? They r extortionate!

(Btw n e1 else heard the rumours of a halo film?.,..)

MS doesn't give a flying fudge outside the US.

But guess what: Sony doesn't give a flying fudge outside *Japan*. As well as most of the Japanese gaming industry; the Japanese versions for popular and not-so-popular games have much much more extras.

And some games don't even get English or any other language for humans release. Ever tried playing an RPG in Japanese? Try searching Macross games, some of the best ones made for PSX were only released in Japan. There's no much difference with US companies being US-centric and Japan companies being Japan-centric. The difference is ... well the Japanese actually do have culture and are very literate.