Disclaimer: The opinions expressed within this column are those of the participants and the moderator, and do not necessarily reflect those of the GIA. There is coarse language and potentially offensive material afoot. Would you believe I've run out of quotes to put up here? Don't say we didn't warn you.

I would say more in intro, but there are a ton of people just bursting with enthusiasm to explain what the heck is going on with the XBox, and who am I to stand in their way?

Onward.

Insofar as there is a "real" reason why Microsoft is doing this, yeah, that's probably it. Those of you who have taken an economics class in high school or college have studied things like demand curves, and there are some demand curves (like those for cigarettes) which dictate that there's a certain market for a product at almost any price, so you might as well jack the price way, way up while you can.

In other words, some marketing task force up in Redmond told Mr. Gates, "we'll get this many sales even at this insanely high price", and he said, ok, go for it. It even makes sense if you assume that there'll be a limited number of consoles at launch, as with the PS2, so Microsoft might as well make the most of what they've got by making sure they'll just be able to sell it at the highest possible price.

Of course, that's the likely, rational reason. Much more interesting are some of the irrational reasons...

Much like Kenshin fights with a reversed blade, or the legendary Master Musashi would take on armed opponents with only a wooden sword at his side, it's possible Bill Gates has simply grown bored of being able to outfox any competition on a level playing field, and now seeks artificial hinderances to further increase the fun of the game. All I've got to say is, watch out for hubris, Mr. Gates...

Hmm, interesting notion. Of course, if they were really serious about that, they'd simply make those products part of the actual package rather than going through this charade of "bundling", much like Atari sold everyone two standard controllers and two paddle controllers, long, long ago.

But even so, your suggestion has merit: the actual games the XBox ships with might not be that great, but XBox owners might (theoretically) still find themselves enjoying their purchases more than their Nintendo and Sony peers, just because their XBox can already do things like broadband, DVD-with-remote-control, a mouse/keyboard combo for FPS games, etc. And afterwards, not only can XBox developers count on being able to program for more interesting and varied control schemes, but positive word of mouth might begin to spread about the "complete XBox experience", which could drive future sales of the product up.

Ok, it's a pipe dream, but an intriguing one.

I wouldn't be too quick to dismiss this, since I personally was already too eager in saying "the XBox will not be a PC", and was then promptly proved wrong when I got to see one crash and restart at E3. Of course, I think a lot of those people who are looking for a top-of-the-line PC experience at a bottom-of-the-barrel XBox price will be somewhat disappointed at how smoothly their system hacks actually run, but at least it'll give the freeware OS community a new toy to play with for a while.

Let me get this straight: you're under the impression that swords, realistically or quasi-realistically, make more sense for combat than guns?

Just think about it for a second: yes, in the right circumstances, swords can cause a tremendous amount of damage, but there are at least two complicating factors with regard to that damage.

First off, in a melee against any kind of opponent, human or whatever, you're going to find yourself hard pressed to actually hit anything with a sword, because your weapon has a very limited range and your opponent's going to be running, dodging, blocking, and attacking while you're doing all this, all of which makes it much more difficult to land that critical attack. Meanwhile, unless you're made of solid titanium, there's no way to avoid taking damage from an accurately aimed gunshot.

Second, and more importantly, you usually don't need to slice someone in half to get rid of them. Again, anything short of a solid block of metal or stone should have a wide array of weak spots - just shoot out a few of them and have done with it. And if you are going against a solid block of stone... well, I'd rather have a sledgehammer than a sword, in that case.

And last but not least: let Cloud have as big a sword as you want, but do you honestly think he'd ever have a realistic chance of stopping a Weapon?

Ok, that was a pointless, fanboyish topic, but isn't that what this column's supposed to be about in the first place?

One thing to keep in mind is that the proximity of the XBox and Gamecube launches wasn't really Microsoft's decision: both companies announced their launch date on the same day, with Microsoft's announcement coming a few short hours before the Nintendo press conference.

Now, there's no way of knowing what actually happened, or who knew what before hand, but more than a few people commented immediately after hearing the GC's launch date that Nintendo hadn't set anything in stone until Microsoft announced, and then picked a date designed to cause maximum disruption to Microsoft's plans. That's just a somewhat far-fetched theory, of course, but Microsoft is in an unfortunate market position, and this may simply be their way of trying to minimize the resulting damage. We'll see what happens, I guess...

Good golly, I like this theory; it's got just enough behind it to sound reasonable, or even fairly crafty, while still maintaining that sweet, refreshing paranoid conspiracy aftertaste we've all come to love. Smokin'!

The reality is simply that Bill Gates has a number of irons in the fire at any one time, and whatever setbacks the company may take on one front will get offset by victories and fallback positions elsewhere.

However, there is a certain eerie resemblance between the XBox pricing policy and the Dot-Net/Windows XP stuff: both take as a base assumption that people can't live without Microsoft products, and both are intent on ultimately charging the user an arm and a leg for those products. Of course, both have a little more going for them than pure, naked opportunism: the XBox seems to have arisen because there's no fundamental reason an American company shouldn't be a major player in the lucrative home console market, and the Dot-Net programming tools put Microsoft's aging Visual Studio development suite in a better position to take on Java, while the XP pricing stuff may be the only real way to combat rampant software piracy in the Far East.

Still, I'm becoming exceedingly glad that I've got three things: a Gamecube preorder, a laptop running the non-Microsoft Mac OS X, and a working knowledge of how to program C, C++ and Java, so I don't have to deal with C-sharp or VB for a living. Yikes.

And there you have it, folks. All I can say is, when a major company leaves itself open for us to make these kind of jokes about it, something's gone horribly, terribly wrong... but at least it makes good copy for the DA column.

Of course, given how upset this policy has made some people, it's not unreasonable that Microsoft would change its mind or somebody would start to break rank. Haven't had a chance to check this out myself, but if true then it might end up being even worse news for Microsoft - not only does this mess with the pricing logic Conor talked about in his first letter, but the XBox now has to deal with the PR damage caused by this whole ploy. What a mess...

Closing Comments:

Your topic for tomorrow is this: we've talked the XBox launch to death, but I honestly don't think we've had any standard, reasonable discussion about the Gamecube launch. You've got a pretty good idea of what it'll cost, and what games will be available with it: what are you getting on GC launch day, and why? Adios for now.

-Chris Jones, getting Smash Bros. at the very least