Hot on the heels of a price reduction for all Xbox 360 consoles, Microsoft is now giving holiday buyers even more value by including two great games with every Xbox 360 console and Xbox 360 Elite, a retail savings of $90 for consumers. The acclaimed “Forza Motorsport 2” (Microsoft Game Studios) and “Marvel Ultimate Alliance” (Activision) will both be included for the recently reduced prices of $349.99 (U.S.) for Xbox 360 and $449.99 (U.S.) for Xbox 360 Elite. Both bundles will be available retail-wide by the end of October.
Sony, you dumb fucks, you’d better do something fast!
I caught wind of this bundle over the weekend and now I’m just waiting for it to hit the stores - great timing, as I’ll be able to grab Mass Effect soon thereafter, which is my main motivation for getting a 360 in the first place.
Man, those are some damn good games for pack-ins. Forza 2 is great, and Marvel Ultimate Alliance is fun too…plus, both of them have same-console multiplayer.
That’s a pretty serious bundle alright. I was expecting another price cut but this is probably a better holiday strategy – those are both good Live games, and funding the initial game purchases for your shiny new console is always tough.
Hell, I don’t even have either of those games (yet, waiting for them to hit $20 or so). Between this and Halo 3, MS is definitely going for the kill. <Mr. Burns> Exxxxcellent. </Mr. Burns>
If the bundle games are good enough, then it’s almost as good as getting a price drop, because you’d need to buy games anyway. Of course the price drop is still better, because then you could buy the games you want with the money you save. But since bundling games costs Microsoft less, they can give you more (in this case, that’s $90 worth of games; I doubt they’d do a $90 price drop).
And that really is a great bundle. Forza 2 is awesome.
I agree but in this case, while it’s a very good bundle, I don’t think it meets that criteria. Marvel is fun enough but hardly a must have and Forza 2 is probably a bit too much of a sim (a Need for Speed game would probably be better for the mass market). Now if they bundled Halo 3 and Gears of War- those are games it’s a safe bet that most 360 owners would buy anyway.
Again, definitely a quality bundle, but I don’t think either game would have been on most people’s must have list this season.
Agreed. Neither of those games is on my 360 wishlist. Gears I’ll be getting on PC, but I’d certainly have settled for a free pack-in copy instead. Dead Rising, Crackdown, Eternal Sonata, Viva Pinata…those I could get behind.
Though I don’t know why I’m bitching about a bundle I’m too poor to afford in the first place.
Buh??? Is this the same Europe where Sony nerfed the Euro-PS3’s backwards compatibility? I would have said MS was already beating Sony’s $399 model there, and this will just exacerbate it.
It makes it very attractive for parents buying for children. Get the 360 that comes with two games and pick up Halo 3 and a second controller and you’re set.
If the PS3 had the 360’s game lineup, it would totally annihilate it at $400. As is, it’ll look pretty damn tasty when MGS4 and little big planet come out.
Forza 2 and Marvel Ultimate Alliance are two of the five games on my “to get” list when I finally get around to picking up a 360, so this is good news for me. Unfortunately, they’ll probably be packed on one disc/in one case/in paper sleeve, which is personal pet peeve of mine.
As for a Halo 3 and Gears of War bundle? They’re both M rated, not everyone likes FPS’s, and they’re both prime AAA titles that move on their own merit.
I think Burnout would have been a more “mass-market” choice, but Forza 2 does look really damn impressive. A Gears or Halo 3 pack-in would be retarded - M-rated titles turn off parents, and people who are really into those kinds of games probably already own a 360, or would 100% for sure buy them along with a 360 purchase.
Maybe Sony will start giving away PS3’s along with HDTV purchases.
So where is the new core bundle (xbox 360 arcade or whatever they are going to call it)? I need a second 360 for cheap with hdmi! I’ve already got a spare 20gb hd sitting here collecting dust.
