Amazon To Sell Xbox 360 for $100?
If you are thinking of buying an Xbox 360 in the next few days, don't. We've gotten information that Amazon may be putting the $300 Xbox 360 bundle on sale for $100 in the next week or so as a promotional move for the holiday season.
Context & Ripple Effects
This lands mid-cycle in the 2006 console race: Microsoft's Xbox 360 has been on shelves for a year at $300 for the core bundle, while Sony's PlayStation 3 is arriving amid $500-level price speculation that framed the whole holiday window as a fight over how much consumers will pay for a new-generation box.
TechCrunch's tip — that Amazon may run the same $300 bundle at $100 as a holiday promotional move — is exactly the kind of aggressive retail pricing that would reset that fight. It is an unconfirmed report from a single source with no corroborating pickups or public comment from Amazon or Microsoft, so treat the $100 figure as claimed, not scheduled.
First-order effects
- If the promotion actually runs, holiday Xbox 360 demand funnels to Amazon while brick-and-mortar retailers are left deciding whether to match a price $200 below Microsoft's own list.
- Microsoft gets a holiday volume spike but loses pricing control: a retailer, not Redmond, would be setting the effective market price for its flagship console going into the season's biggest weeks.
Second-order effects
- Sony's PlayStation 3 launch, already carrying a roughly $500 price point, would face a competitor effectively priced near a game's cost — widening the value gap its launch messaging has to overcome at the worst possible moment.
- Other large retailers would come under immediate pressure to extract equivalent promotional funding from Microsoft, since eating the full $200 discount out of their own margin is not sustainable across a holiday quarter.
Third-order effects
- Retailer-led discounts decoupling street price from manufacturer list price push console economics further toward the subsidy model — sell the box cheap, recover the margin on games and accessories — making the hardware price less a Microsoft decision than a negotiation with whoever moves the most units.
- If single-source price leaks reliably move purchase timing, rumor management becomes part of every console maker's holiday playbook alongside the official pricing calendar.
The trend: In the console market, effective prices are increasingly set by retailer holiday promotions and leaked deal talk rather than by manufacturers' list prices.