Season of the XBox or Last Call?

[Razer]

Stores are slitting their own throats to move the XB360 this week. I don't know if that's good or bad news for Microsoft as i'm sure it's MS that's absorbing the losses.

Target- Buy an XB360 Pro package and get NBA2K7 free ($60 game)
Toys R Us- Buy an XB360 Pro package and get a $100 TRU gift card.

I haven't seen any other offers yet but those two are really amazing. Consoles lose money on their own but to add an additional $60-100 on top of that? Wow.

I'm not predicting but I personally feel this is a bad sign for MS.

TRU is also having a Buy 2, Get 1 Free sale on Activision games, the hits IMO being Marvel Ultimate Alliance, Call of Duty 3, and Tony Hawk's Project 8.

Tis the season to be a gamer, for sure!

[BK]

It's not so much that it's a bad sign for Microsoft, it's just that with the release of it's competition a lot of focus has been taken off of the 360. At my Best Buy we still sell plenty and it will continue to sell as long as great games keep coming out to feed the user-base.

The gift card offer from Toys-R-Us isn't so much a slitting of the throat either, stores view gift cards as a sure way to drive revenue on a future sale. Statistics show that someone with a gift card will almost always spend more a decent amount more than the gift cards value.

[RuneLateralus]

If these deals were going on along with the price going in half...maybe then a sign of things going bad.

But the gift card thing is them trying to ensure a return visit. The store itself will not lose the money, and MS isn't losing anymore than they were with the sale of the system.

Besides, I work at a Gamestop and while 360 systems are not flying off as fast as Wii systems are, the games made for the system are selling very well (especially Gears and Rainbow Six which are the two really hot titles out right now). Hell, Viva Pinata is doing pretty good for itself and I really didn't think that was going to.