Items tagged with Price
The Nintendo 3DS was, at least in part, an experiment. The company had never launched a 3D-enabled console or handheld of any kind prior to it, so there was no baseline for how it would do in a market still curious about the true, tangible benefits of 3D. In fact, Nintendo has made reference in the past to avoid a 3D at-home console until adoption was stronger, and while there's no telling if the 3DS met or exceeding Nintendo's internal sales goals, a dramatic price cut usually indicates that they aren't selling enough. Just under a million of the handhelds were sold in the U.S., but that number is likely to jump up in the coming weeks and month, because the 3DS has dropped from $249 to $169....
Read more...
It's hard to argue that more competition is better for consumers, and that's proving true once again in the growing e-reader market. For awhile, Amazon's Kindle dominated the entire space, and they pretty much ran the show. The Kindle (and subsequent revisions) were always priced rather fairly in the eyes of critics, but there's nothing like a surprise price drop to really get interest growing. In the hours following Barnes & Noble's announcement of the Wi-Fi only NOOK (and the price drop on the 3G + Wi-Fi NOOK to just $199), Amazon decided to cut the price of their Kindle (with global 3G wireless + Wi-Fi) in order to better compete. Before B&N's reveal, the Kindle was priced at $259....
Read more...
Sony lowered the bar with its $299.99 PlayStation 3 slim, and Microsoft followed up with a $100 price cut (and now a $50 rebate on top of that) on its Xbox 360 Elite. And with the holiday season quickly approaching, Nintendo knew it had to do something. In an effort to not be left behind in the latest round of console price cuts, Nintendo has decided to drop the MSRP of the hot selling Wii by $50. For nearly three full years, the Wii has sold (like crazy) for $249.99. Most stores couldn't even keep them in stock at that point, so up until now, Nintendo really hasn't seen a need to lower the barrier to entry. But when you consider that a Blu-ray supporting PS3 is now just $50 more than a non-HD...
Read more...
Believe it or not, Windows 7 is about to take the computing world by storm. If all goes to plan, we'll see Microsoft's latest (and hopefully greatest) OS on store shelves by the time 2009 draws to a close, but it remains to be seen who all will be jumping to upgrade. According to Darrel Ward, director of product management for Dell's business client product group, he's not so sure that folks will be waiting with credit cards out to jump on the next-gen bandwagon. In a recent phone interview, he was quoted as saying that if there is "one thing that may influence adoption, make things slower or cause customers to pause, it's that generally the ASPs (average selling price) of the operating systems...
Read more...
Microsoft introduced its latest Zune models, as well as the version 3.0 update of its software in September. And here we are, already facing a price cut, and a pretty good one at that. Although Microsoft would like to call it a holiday price cut, one would have to wonder if the difficult economy, which has led to some pretty sad forecasts from retailers, has anything to do with this.Just FYI, these cuts are only for flash-based Zunes and accessories. According to the official Zune blog, the prices, starting tomorrow, will be as follows:Zune 4GB - $99.99 (-$30)Zune 8GB - $139.99 (-$10)Zune 16GB - $179.99 (-$20)Car Pack - $69.99 (-$10)Home/AV Pack - $59.99 (-$20)Dock Pack - $39.99 (-$10)Note that...
Read more...
If you are thinking of taking advantage of Circuit City's closing of 155 retail store locations to score a sweet deal on a new HDTV, the folks over at HD Guru warn that not only are deals not to be had, but that you might actually wind up paying more for it and potentially taking home a lemon. HD Guru visited a Circuit City in Massapequa, New York that is closing, to investigate what deals were to be had. What they found was alarming. At this particular Circuit City location, HDTVs were being sold at ten percent off "pre-closeout" prices. The only problem is that the pre-closeout prices were actually jacked-up from what Circuit City sell the same HDTV models for on CircuitCity.com. The end result...
Read more...
According to reports, Comcast is set to unveil new speed tiers and prices to go along with them. This will go well with the new metered use that went into effect on Oct. 1st: it will mean you can reach your 250 GB cap faster. At any rate, DSL Reports says they have exclusive info about the new tiers, which will be the following: Economy: Unchanged at $24.95 for 768 kbps down/384 kbps up.Performance: 6/1 Mbps will now get 12/2 Mbps for $42.95 a month.Performance: 8/2 Mbps will get 16/2 for $52.95 a month.Ultra: 22/5 Mbps for $62.95 a month. (Will update to 30/5 Mbps.)Extreme Fifty: 50/10 Mbps for $139.95The Ultra and Extreme 50 tiers will obviously require new DOCSIS 3.0 modems. And they won't...
Read more...
Yes, Virginia, there is cellular phone news that doesn't involve the iPhone. That doesn't mean we won't mention it at least once - or twice. AT&T and Palm have lowered the price of the Centro to $69.99. This is part of a back-to-school promotion, running from 7/11 to 9/20. We have to point out to Palm that they need to update their website. At the time of this writing it still says "as low as $99.99." Once you click "Buy" and select AT&T, you can see the offer, which involves a mail-in rebate. And with the new Electric Blue color, it's a pretty attractive device. Despite the fact that PalmOS is no longer the smartphone OS of the week, failing to keep up with even Windows Mobile, much...
Read more...
Rumors have been circulating of a possible $50 price cut for the Xbox 360 Pro, the 20 GB model. While still a rumor, more evidence has arisen which seems to not just point to a $50 price cut, but also to the day: this coming Sunday.Below is an image scanned from a Target flier. Not only is the price cut by $50, Target is throwing in a $25 gift card as well.To the right, you can see a scanned image from a Best Buy flier. They're not throwing in a gift card, so Target has the better deal, for those of you who are frugal.The last such price cut for the Xbox 360 Pro came in August 2007, when it was cut from $399 to $349.This does leave the Xbox 360 Core in an awkward price point, at only $20 less...
Read more...
It looks like the news we broke last week regarding GeForce GTX 200 series pricing has already taken effect at a couple of on-line retailers. We just did a quick search at NewEgg and found that a handful of GeForce GTX 260 cards are priced between $299 and $339, which puts them right about on-par with the roughly $310 Radeon HD 4870. Although, the least expensive of the bunch (MSI's $299 GeForce GTX 260) appears to have already sold out.Many GeForce GTX 280 cards have also dropped in price too. As you can see here, the $499 we quoted last week was right on the money, and a number of others are priced only slightly higher at about $519 to $539. And MSI's offering is priced even...
Read more...
Over the last couple of days, there have been some rumblings around the web that NVIDIA is planning to drop the price of their recently launched GeForce GTX 260 and GTX 280 cards in response to AMD's potent, and more affordable, Radeon HD 4800 series. The actual numbers quoted have varied, but today we heard some news directly from multiple NVIDIA board partners that pricing on the GeForce GTX 280 may actually be dropping to as low as $499--a significant drop from the $649 launch price. Unfortunately, we were unable to confirm a price for the GTX 260, but we suspect it will hover somewhere around the $299 - $339 price points to better compete with the Radeon HD 4870. Upon hearing...
Read more...
Often companies have very complex rules regarding price matching, but it hardly seems to justify some of the reported actions of a Circuit City manager toward a consumer named Emmett. All this poor guy wanted was a price match on a GPS from Circuit City, and he ended up running out of the store before the police could arrive to kick him out, or possibly arrest him. Here’s his story: “...I drove down to the store, brought the GPS and the Costco ad to the checkout. The teller called for a manager to override the price. The manager declined to do so. So I asked to speak with the store manager. I was introduced to Brad, who later refused to give his last name. I explained...
Read more...
The word on the streets of Taipei is that Intel is planning what could very well be the pre-Nehalem price cuts on existing and upcoming Core 2-based products. The current plan is to reduce prices in the third quarter and add a few more CPUs just to firm-up the low and mid-range. This could very well be a sign that we can expect a very strong launch from Nehalem, but we’ll continue to keep our fingers crossed just in case. “The Core 2 Quad 9450, currently priced at US$316, will be phased out of the market to be replaced by the Core 2 Quad 9400 at 2.66GHz and a price of US$266. The Core 2 Quad Q9300 and Q6700 will both be phased out at the same time too, leaving the Q6600 as the...
Read more...
The continued demand for laptop memory appears to be overshadowing the need for faster graphics memory, at least according to inside sources at unnamed players in the DRAM industry:"Some DRAM makers have started allotting more capacity for commodity DRAM, especially SO-DIMMs for notebooks, the sources said. Capacity for GDDR has started to strain amid the strategic capacity allocation, they noted. As DRAM makers are expected to reserve capacity priority for commodity DRAM for 1-2 quarters, a price revision for GDDR is thus likely, they said. The sources indicated that a price hike is likely to be seen from the second half of May, as some system makers are expected to completely digest their...
Read more...
The iPhone currently isn't subsidized. But what if it was? Can you imagine what the price might be? That's the rumor about the 3G version which is due out soon.When the 3G iPhone is introduced this summer, AT&T, the exclusive U.S. iPhone sales partner with Apple, will cut the price by as much as $200, according to a person familiar with the strategy.AT&T is preparing to subsidize $200 of the cost of a new iPhone, bringing the price down to $199 for customers who sign two-year contracts, the source says. Apple is expected to have two versions of the new iPhone, an 8-gigabyte-memory and a 16-gigabyte-memory model with price tags widely expected to be $399 and $499.Can...
Read more...
Good news, for those of you looking for a better deal in CPUs, came across the wire today from Intel. New price reductions have been announced and one could say they're taking price points down to bargain-basement levels in some spots, with cost savings ranging from 12% to a whopping 50% on the Core 2 Quad Q6700 2.66GHz processor. This pricing represents major reductions across both 45nm and 65nm CPU families in both their desktop, value and workstation/server lineup. This move will definitely turn up the burners on rival AMD. Read 'em and weep... Previous Price New Price Cost Savings Intel® Core™2 Quad Processor Q6700 (8M Cache, 2.66 GHz, 1066 MHz FSB) $530 $266...
Read more...
DRAM prices have been at incredibly low levels for so long that it's hard to imagine that they'll stay this way forever. So how long will this trend continue? Apparently a year or more if the analysts are on target:The current DRAM downturn will likely last more than a year and possibly two, said Simon Woo, memory chip analyst at Merrill Lynch, at a conference in Taipei last week."It's longer than expected," he said, comparing it to the DRAM industry crunch of 1997-1998, which lasted nearly two years.This is excellent news for anyone building or upgrading, especially if you're planning on going with a 64-bit OS....
Read more...
NVIDIA's 9600GT has had a dramatic impact since its arrival, showing performance that a sub $200 video card provide surprising levels of performance.“Since then retailers such as Newegg cut pricing below the original MSRP of $169-189, down to $150 on NVIDIA GeForce 9600GT models.In response to this, AMD is set to cut prices yet again on its Radeon HD 3800 line. Independent retailers tell DailyTech they are receiving partner pressure to drop the price on these cards below the corporate pricing set just a few weeks ago.”With prices dropping this quickly on both NVIDIA and AMD cards, we can certainly see a lot more users willing to take the leap and try SLI and Crossfire configurations out for the...
Read more...
They say that beggars can't be choosers, but apparently consumers can be. The choice that consumers are likely to be faced with in the near future is not whether to go down the SSD route, but which type of SSD do they want.“Faster drives and a falling cost-per-gigabyte should help bring drive costs down from the stratosphere and into a price bracket more consumers can afford, but the focus in the manufacturing world right now is on boosting storage capacities and performance, not reducing costs. It's very much a game right now where every 12 months, we're going to see considerable breakthroughs in performance.”With annual breakthroughs in performance come annual waves of 'obsolete' parts...
Read more...
Microsoft announced it was lowering Windows Vista prices last Thursday. While the price cuts aren't scheduled to go into effect until the release of Service Pack 1 (SP1), Microsoft had said that many retailers would be offering promotions that would drop Vista to its new lower prices.But the ad at OfficeMax took things a step further. In this week's circular, the office products chain is selling Windows Vista Home Premium for $99. That's $30 less than Microsoft's just-lowered price and the same as the suggested price for Windows Vista Home Basic--though perhaps just a hair more than the clearance prices a couple weeks back at closing CompUSA stores.The question now is just how low will Vista...
Read more...
Microsoft sells the vast majority of its Windows Vista operating systems pre-installed on new machines. In a bid to expand the customer base of Vista users to include people still using the XP OS, plus new adopters like those that build their own PCs and need to purchase an OS at retail, Microsoft has announced a fairly steep price reduction in various versions of Vista.The price cuts vary by market but in general will range from 20 to 40 percent. In the U.S., an upgrade from earlier versions of Windows to Vista Home Premium will cost $130, compared with the current $160. A full version of the top-end Vista Ultimate edition will sell for $320, down from $400.The new prices will take effect with...
Read more...
Verizon Wireless started a price war on Tuesday by announcing a $99.99 unlimited calling plan across the United States. The ink barely had time to dry on the press release before AT&T matched the offer.Verizon Wireless introduced an unlimited calling plan for $99.99 a month on Tuesday, a move that was quickly matched by AT&T Mobility and T-Mobile USA and weighed down stock prices for all U.S. mobile carriers.Verizon Wireless was apparently the first major carrier to make an "unlimited" plan available nationwide with no domestic roaming or long-distance fees. Its announcement was all but five hours old when AT&T announced its own unlimited plan.Three hours later, T-Mobile followed...
Read more...
