What do MS do with all the dead 360s?

gavan

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Given what seems to be a massive amount of dead boxes and the fact that most won't be economical to repair, what are MS going to do with all the duff hardware?

A landfill in the New Mexico desert? Recycling of some sort (expensive)? Sell them cheap to a third party who might attempt to repair and sell as reconditioned over ebay, or in a less developed economy?


Gav
 
the fact that most won't be economical to repair

Why? Most failures are down to HDD, Power Supply or DVD Drive. All very cheap for MS to swap out.

I would imagine that they would repair the "easy stuff" and use it to send back to people who make warranty claims. The 360's that are in need of more attention would probably get the working parts stripped out and re-used, the rest scrapped.

Horness
 
Easy things like disc drives would be changed and the consoles would then be probably be used as return machines for customers making claims.

Say it was the first XBox which is about £70 quid they are more likely to just chuck them and offer replacments as they are now a hell of alot cheaper to develop where as the 360 they are loosing money developing them first time round
 
lee_c00per said:
Easy things like disc drives would be changed and the consoles would then be probably be used as return machines for customers making claims.

Say it was the first XBox which is about £70 quid they are more likely to just chuck them and offer replacments as they are now a hell of alot cheaper to develop where as the 360 they are loosing money developing them first time round


I don't think that the original XBox ever turned a profit on hardware sales. AFAIK it was always more expensive to manufacture than the RRP.

I can't see the 360 ever being cheaper to make than the RRP either.


Gav
 
they arent!! 360s cost more than £280 to bulit i think!!

but htey sell games for £50 and copies of them cost about 5p so they make their money in the games
 
michaelT1888 said:
they arent!! 360s cost more than £280 to bulit i think!!

but htey sell games for £50 and copies of them cost about 5p so they make their money in the games


well the retailer, distributor, publisher and taxman will take a cut, but yes, MS charge a license fee for each disc pressed. They probably make a tenner for each game sold. But even then, if they are losing £100 per machine, I'm going to have to buy a lot of games for them to start making money from me.

Fact is they probably won't make any money out of us initial purchasers. But we'll (hopefully for MS) lay the groundwork for more people to buy the machine, and the manufacturing cost will go down
 
Maybe theres a MS monster which feeds on dead 360s in order to make itself bigger and stronger. The same goes for other manufacturers and thier products, eg, ipod batteries, chinese dvd players, italian and french cars then one day they will all have a great big battle in the streets and knock some buildings over... then one day after that they will make a game of it. Id play it!
 
I was reading that the ammount of money Microsoft lost on the first console is equal to all of the sales of the 360 Core machines world wide from December to March.

PS3 production costs are expected to be $900 now and $450 in 3 years time

You're right in that Microsoft make their money from the games and assesories sold, Why do you think retailers were told to almost force bundles onto people?

Selling a console on it's own in 1 transation will loose money for Microsoft but selling a console and extras at £450-£500 in 1 transaction will make them a cool and heathy profit
 
lee_c00per said:
You're right in that Microsoft make their money from the games and assesories sold, Why do you think retailers were told to almost force bundles onto people?


I don't think anyone needed to tell the retailers. Stocks of the hardware were extremely limited at launch, and there was huge demand. I doubt there's much profit in the hardware for the shops either, therefore, they felt that needed to boost their profits by bundling and knew that they could probably get away with it.


gav
 
michaelT1888 said:
but htey sell games for £50 and copies of them cost about 5p so they make their money in the games

A game only costs 5p to make? What about dev time, staff wages, distribution and marketing costs?

Whilst its true that the intrinsic value of the disc is nominal, in real terms it is much higher.

Infact in Edge last month a report showed that only around 25 games turned a profit in 2005.
 
To be fair games can be bought cheaper than £50 and the cost of storage etc is covered by the increased cost of other products in the shop/online store.

The cost of making a game isn`t ast cheap as people think. The actual production of the printed disk, case and cover is quite low - mainly due to the number made and also the cheaper labour in the countries that produce them.

However, as dodger747 has pointed out, the stages from concept to final beta testing, along with marketing and distribution costs are very high.

The designers, developers and professsional testers are on pretty good wages(incresed by where they live and work - eg a develope in the UK costs more than on in Mumbai). UK rates are high - have a search on Jobserve.co.uk and you`ll see what I mean.

Market and distribution aint cheap either......

And to be fair these companies are out to make money, it`s why they exist. It`s up to us as consumers to decide if what they are offering is worth the cost to us.......we do have the final choice.
 
dodger747 said:
A game only costs 5p to make? What about dev time, staff wages, distribution and marketing costs?

Whilst its true that the intrinsic value of the disc is nominal, in real terms it is much higher.

Infact in Edge last month a report showed that only around 25 games turned a profit in 2005.

well they cost 5p to copy then
 
lol apart from copying being illegal and the 360, thankfully, not hacked yet. How do you get to only 5p ??

There is the blank disk to pay for, electricity to run the PC, heating and lighting in the room. Not to mention that you`ve had to buy a PC and DVD writer. So at least a small amount of that origonal cost should be applied to your figures :)

This is the exact reason shops charge more than online - all the "hidden" costs...
 
Be that as it may but I've just been reading my post again...

Its just suddenly hit me that only around 25 games made a profit last year. [in Europe/US].

Surely devs and publishers can't keep affording to take such major loses and keep producing quality games.

Gamers moan about the lack of origniality in games, but with those figures it is no surprise that they stick with sure fire Fifa/fps generic copies...

Get buying the obscure games guys... your console needs you.:thumbsup:
 

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