14 DAY TRIAL // Yeah, sure it's fair, for you guys maybe, but for us buyers, not so fair. In an interview with Game Theory, Microsoft sent company's group product manager for Xbox 360 and Xbox Live to tell people that, although the 120 gig hard drive for the Xbox 360 Elite sounds a little pricey, it's actually not.
As NextGeneration posts, speaking to weekly podcast Game Theory, Aaron Greenberg said: "What we have done is release a smaller laptop size drive. If you compare what we are offering with a real plug and play drive the closest thing would be to tale a 120 gig self powered external PC drive and in that case we are seeing those retail at anywhere from $160 to $200 for comparable laptop sized external hard drives." So then, why buy your console, instead of tuning up our PCs?
Greenberg continued: "We do hear consumers but we pay a premium for these drives. That's just the nature of it. If you starts with the core $299 SKU everything we have done is based on adding storage. If you had the $100 hard drive that gets you to $399. If you added the $179 hard drive to the $299 SKU that gets you to $479 which is the Elite SKU so there is consistency in the way we think about this." He does have a way with words, I'll give him that, but isn't Microsoft's product manager a little too keen on making us understand why the Elite's HDD is so damned expensive? They had to do that in order to do that..., they added that..., it's the same with laptop drives...
Why don't they just say it to our face: "Yeah, we know it's expensive. It cost a lot to make it. Now, whether you need it or not, that's your business." That's what I'd call fair.