NEWS - Thursday, August 25, 2005
GameStop Announces $1,200 Bundle
While neither EB’s nor Gamestop’s customers are even vaguely mainstream, there has to be something ludicrous about these forced bundles for online sale. As we detailed yesterday some of the reasons for bundling of software with allocated hardware shipments in the EBworld.com story, bundling is a way for retailers to maximize their share of the new hardware market. The $1,199.93 Ultimate bundle at Gamestop.com includes: The Xbox 360 system (with appropriately bundled accessories including hard drive), Perfect Dark, PGR3, Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, Dead or Alive 4, Call of Duty 2, Gun, Quake 4, Tony Hawk’s American Wasteland, Condemned, Madden NFL 06, Kameo, an additional wireless controller, play and charge kit, rechargeable battery, Xbox Live 12 month card, 1 year product replacement plan. In addition, you’ll be charged an additional $10 for shipping and handling. Next Generation hasn’t even been able to confirm if some of these bundled titles are even shipping at launch. Quite frankly, these bundles have made a mockery of the core pricing that Microsoft put forward at $299. The fact that the "core" system at Gamestop, costs $699 is just plain silly. We question what consumer (any consumer) would spend such a sum and not get a hard drive? While calls to real, local storefronts for GameStop and EB have both confirmed that it is possible to pre-order these systems in the Microsoft prescribed core and regular bundles (for now anyway), the fact that there’s no capability of doing so in the online stores seems almost tantamount to Ebay-robbery.Source: http://www.next-gen.biz/
