Cheap Xbox 360 Prices – Best Xbox360 Console Deals

If the rumours are true, it means that Microsoft has just agreed to lower the prices of the Xbox 360 console. I guess this is probably a strategy to attract some of Sony's buyers or maybe Bill has a new secret ready to be unveiled.

Despite the reason, Xbox is now the most attractive gaming console on the market financially speaking. It will be very interesting if Sony will accept the challenge and will lower the prices for their PS3 console offering fans worldwide a beautiful Christmas present.

Now, the price tag on the Xbox 360 is $299.99 but the exact same price on a powerful PS3 console will be a true winner.

The latest news announced the new prices for September and if we're lucky this can be the beginning of a beautiful friendship between console manufacturers and fans worldwide.

With affordable prices for consoles people would buy more accessories everyday not to mention that some gamers will probably even have multiple consoles.

It will be perfect; it will be the dream of every buyer! If you're looking to find the best available deals, you can find a few interesting offers online.

The Internet is your best friend when it comes to gaming gadgets. You can buy a full gaming package for a few hundred of bucks in only a few minutes! One of the best site to buy cheap xbox360 consoles online is ebay.

There are literally thousands of xbox 360 auctions on ebay at any one time and the average selling price for xbox360 is usually between $120-$200.

That's as much as a 70% discount.Of course, you should do your homework and make sure the ebay seller is legit.

You can check the seller feedback ratings and reviews as well as contact the seller.

New Xbox 360 bug

Just as criticisms of the "red ring of death" errors plaguing the Xbox 360 have begun to die down, Microsoft's crash-prone console has been hit with debilitating new problems.

After several months of complaints by users, Microsoft owned up today and announced that it was expanding its extended three-year warranty to cover the new "E74" errors, which it said were due to "general hardware failure".

Users experiencing the issue are greeted with a black screen with the words "System Error: Contact Xbox Customer Support" in various languages above an error code, "E74".

Microsoft said the issue was associated with the "three flashing red lights error" on the console, which has been dubbed by gamers as the "red ring of death" as the red lights show only once the Xbox 360 console has stopped working permanently.

In July 2007, the software giant took a US$1 billion hit to its bottom line in warranty expenses for replaced consoles and vowed to extend its global warranty cover for the "red ring of death" issue to three years. As of today, this warranty now covers those experiencing the E74 issue.

A Microsoft Australia spokesman confirmed the warranty and free repairs would be extended to customers in Australia. Those who already had to pay to repair the E74 issue will be offered refunds.

"We have already made improvements to the console that will reduce the likelihood of an occurrence of this issue," Microsoft said in a statement.

The Xbox 360 is also prone to scratching discs deeply if the machine is even slightly knocked while it is in operation.

Microsoft - which forced affected users to buy replacement discs - was sued over the disc scratching issue in the US. Documents unsealed in the class action suit revealed that it knew about the problems months before the console was launched, yet neglected to fix them.

Microsoft eventually instituted an Xbox 360 disc replacement program but this applied only to games published by Microsoft and the cost was US$20 a disc.

Separately, with the red ring of death issue, investigations by VentureBeat and other news outlets claim that Microsoft knew about potential hardware problems but did not fix them in the rush to get the console to market early.

Retailers reportedly found that up to a third of Xbox 360 consoles sold at launch failed.

Microsoft only owned up to the E74 issue after an investigation by gaming blog Joystiq, which uncovered scores of users affected by the problem.

Before today, when Microsoft added the E74 issue to its three-year warranty, those who experienced the error had to pay for their own repairs if it occurred a year or more after they bought the console.

Joystiq asked readers to submit information on when they bought their systems, what model Xbox 360 they had and when the E74 error occurred, and compiled the data to find trends.

"One oddity is that there is no correlation between the dates on which the systems in question were purchased and when they went belly up," Joystiq wrote.

"The error usually occurred after anywhere from 12 to 36 months of use, with many of you claiming that trouble arose on consoles that have already been repaired for Red Ring of Death.

"Whatever modifications Microsoft has made to the console to improve its reliability in the past years seems to have no bearing on the likelihood of E74."

Xbox 360 To Get Integrated Blu-ray In Its Next Console Release?

Following the death of HD DVD and Microsoft's decision to discontinue offering the HD DVD add-on for the Xbox 360, we first heard from Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer that we would see some sort of Xbox 360/Blu-ray integration sometime this year.

This statement from Microsoft's guy-who-should-know was quickly deemed a misinterpretation by the Xbox product manager, Aaron Greenberg, who said days after the Ballmer statement that Microsoft is "not currently in talks with Sony or the Blu-ray Association to integrate Blu-ray into the Xbox experience".

Days after Greenberg quashed the Ballmer rumor, another Microsoft exec, Chris Lewis said that Xbox 360 users prefer digital downloads over any type of physical media storage device and with increasing broadband proliferation we would never see a Blu-ray player comingling with an Xbox 360.

Most of the back-and-forth has come from within the backrooms of Microsoft so far, but independent industry sources have now said that Japanese manufacturer Lite-On is currently producing BD-ROM drives for the next-generation of Xbox 360 consoles.

That would mean two things we didn't know before-there'll be a next-gen Xbox 360 and it looks like it'll have an integrated Blu-ray player. Lite-On will begin shipping the BD-ROM's in the second half of 2008 meaning we could see a new Xbox 360 release as early as 2009.

The next-gen Xbox 360 is also rumored to be smaller than the current edition console thanks to a reduction in its power supply from 210W to 170W.

The reduction in power should also reduce production costs, which hopefully will filter down to the final buyer (read: us) resulting in lower consumer prices.

New Xbox 360 Bundle Launches in South Africa

We may not be getting any more price cuts anytime soon, however we received a press release from Microsoft notifying us that a new Xbox 360 bundle will be available from April 1st.

The new bundle will contain an Xbox 360 Pro 60GB, as well as both Burnout Paradise The Ultimate Box as well as Trivial Pursuit. The estimated retail price for the bundle is set at R3,799.00.

More hardware problems plague Xbox 360

Just as criticisms of the "red ring of death" errors plaguing the Xbox 360 have begun to die down, Microsoft's crash-prone console has been hit with debilitating new problems.

After several months of complaints by users, Microsoft owned up today and announced that it was expanding its extended three-year warranty to cover the new "E74" errors, which it said were due to "general hardware failure".

Users experiencing the issue are greeted with a black screen with the words "System Error: Contact Xbox Customer Support" in various languages above an error code, "E74".

Microsoft said the issue was associated with the "three flashing red lights error" on the console, which has been dubbed by gamers as the "red ring of death" as the red lights show only once the Xbox 360 console has stopped working permanently.

In July 2007, the software giant took a $US1 billion hit to its bottom line in warranty expenses for replaced consoles and vowed to extend its global warranty cover for the "red ring of death" issue to three years. As of today, this warranty now covers those experiencing the E74 issue.

A Microsoft Australia spokesman confirmed the warranty and free repairs would be extended to customers in Australia. Those who already had to pay to repair the E74 issue will be offered refunds.

"We have already made improvements to the console that will reduce the likelihood of an occurrence of this issue," Microsoft said in a statement.

The Xbox 360 is also prone to scratching discs deeply if the machine is even slightly knocked while it is in operation.

Microsoft - which forced affected users to buy replacement discs - was sued over the disc scratching issue in the US. Documents unsealed in the class action suit revealed that it knew about the problems months before the console was launched, yet neglected to fix them.

Microsoft eventually instituted an Xbox 360 disc replacement program but this applied only to games published by Microsoft and the cost was $US20 a disc.

Separately, with the red ring of death issue, investigations by VentureBeat and other news outlets claim that Microsoft knew about potential hardware problems but did not fix them in the rush to get the console to market early.

Retailers reportedly found that up to a third of Xbox 360 consoles sold at launch failed.

Microsoft only owned up to the E74 issue after an investigation by gaming blog Joystiq, which uncovered scores of users affected by the problem.

Before today, when Microsoft added the E74 issue to its three-year warranty, those who experienced the error had to pay for their own repairs if it occurred a year or more after they bought the console.

Joystiq asked readers to submit information on when they bought their systems, what model Xbox 360 they had and when the E74 error occurred, and compiled the data to find trends.
"One oddity is that there is no correlation between the dates on which the systems in question were purchased and when they went belly up," Joystiq wrote.

"The error usually occurred after anywhere from 12 to 36 months of use, with many of you claiming that trouble arose on consoles that have already been repaired for Red Ring of Death.
"Whatever modifications Microsoft has made to the console to improve its reliability in the past years seems to have no bearing on the likelihood of E74."

Massive Failure Rate For Xbox 360

Retailers are claiming that Microsoft has had to handle a failure rate of over 30% with their Xbox 360 console. More than 100 consumers have written to SmartHouse complaining of either poor service from Microsoft or total failure of their gaming console.

One consumer was even given back a refurbished unit in exchange for their original Xbox console Several months ago SmartHouse raised the issue of potential problems with the Xbox 360 after several readers wrote to us complaining of persistent failures.

Even one of our testing Xbox 360 systems that we use to review software failed and had to be returned to Microsoft for repair.

Other consumers have complained of sending off their Xbox for repair only to get a different re furbished unit back.

During the past few weeks SmartHouse has received email after email from Xbox 360 owners complaining of problems.

Ironically a lot of the problems seem to appear after 12 months of use.

Steve & Jo Kitcher wrote"

Just to let you know that after 13 months, just outside of warranty, I have the "rings of death".
Next step for me is to find out repair cost and contemplating going to PS3"

Ron Harris wrote "I have had my Xbox 360 exactly one year and now I have got the ring of death and it won't even boot up".

Andrew & Kathryn Smith of Sydney claim to have had a torrid time with Microsoft over the failure of their Xbox 360.

PS3, Xbox 360 hit console sales milestones in Japan

Sony's PlayStation 3 and Microsoft's Xbox 360 have both hit sales milestones in Japan in the last week.
PS3 sales passed the 3 million unit mark while Microsoft sold its millionth Xbox 360 in the country since those consoles were released, according to data released Tuesday by Famitsu Marketing Services.

The company compiles console hardware and games sales reports from data collected from point-of-sale systems at shops across Japan.

That the PS3 has outsold the Xbox 360 is no real surprise, but the figures do show how much better the Microsoft console has done in Japan this time around versus the original Xbox.

The original console sold just 470,000 units in Japan compared to 21 million PlayStation 2s -- a number that is still rising even with the availability of the PS3.

In contrast, both have been easily outsold by Nintendo's Wii, which is about to break the 8 million unit mark. The Wii was initially written off by some for its lack of high-definition graphics and simplistic approach to gaming.

The Wii dumps the joystick for an innovative motion-sensitive controller, which has proved to be the secret of its success.

Looking ahead there are clouds on the horizon for the Wii. Sales of the console are no longer climbing in Japan.

During the first nine months of the year, a total of 18.9 million consoles were sold versus 29.9 million in the same period of 2007, so Nintendo is having to come up with new reasons for people to buy the console or keep on using it.

The latest is a video channel that will launch soon as an initially free service.

Both Sony and Microsoft are also expanding video services on their consoles to pull in more customers and, after a bumpy start for both consoles, games line-ups are improving and attracting more people to the systems.