Are Gamers Ripped Off? Microsoft Xbox 360 hard drive prices
Filed under: Gaming, Xbox 360 | By: Daniel
Posted on: July 29, 2008 | 7 Comments
When we look at the cost of hard drives and the industry as a whole, they have continued to get better value for money each year. Then we look at the Xbox 360 and how much Microsoft is charging for the hard drive add-ons.
We could think that gamers are getting ripped off with Xbox 360 hard drive prices. While its around $180 for the 120GB drive and about $90 for the 20GB, the larger one gives you much better value for money.
When we compare these prices to regular hard drives, you wonder why Xbox 360 owners pay so much more money.
Regular 750GB hard drives at Best Buy cost around $200 and a 250GB portable 2.5-inch drive costs $79.60 on Amazon. I am sure some people could even find these drives much cheaper than this.
So why are the Xbox 360 hard drives so much money and do you feel that 360 owners are getting ripped off?
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It is a rip off and it’s a disgrace. I don’t want to fuel the fanboy flames but Sony allow for the addition of any 2.5″ SATA drive, which has to be one of the least greedy additions to their Blu-Ray console.
yes I agree completely and its something like £60 for their wireless adapter. That is just completely stupid. Thats not far of half the price of the wii and the wii has one in built. The ps3 is best console in terms of value for money.
There is a reason why Microsoft doesn’t use the ability to have any hard drive compatible for the 360. The reason is that most hackers would be able to hack into a console with an external hard drive. So the PS3 is prone to be hackable through the feature of allowing external hard drives to connect to it. The 360 on the other hand has a customized hard drive and is makes it harder for the hackers to hack the 360 through hard drive. For the price problem, the total cost of actually selling the Xbox hard drive is much lower than you might expect. The 120GB actually costs less than $150 to manufactuer, but stores charges an extra $20-40 to gain profit for the item they bought. You can always go to Ebay or Amazon and buy a 120GB for under $140.
If you crack open the 360 drive you’ll find a standard sata drive, just like the ones used in the PS3. The 360 drive can also be hacked so you can add your own, larger drive.
They could at least put in a flash based hard drive to justify the cost…
It really pisses me off that the prices are so high for these things.
Thankfully I don’t think they’ll be able to get away with this and no wireless on their next console.