Behind the Xbox 360 Hard Drive’s Insane Price

You might not know this , but 120 GB hard drivesdon’t actually be $ 180 . Unless they ’re for the Xbox 360 . The teardown fanatic at iSuppli attempted to find some method to this madness . As you may approximate , the numbers do n’t quite tally up to $ 180 , but it really gets a lot close than you ’d conceive .

Their supply chain break in down goes along three gradation . After a unvoiced ride gyre out of the oven at either Seagate or Toshiba , it ’s preloaded with software and OS stuff ( like Xbox Live ) . Next , it goes out to a Value Added Reseller , who buy the drives for about $ 75 a pop , and then slaps them inside the Xbox 360 compatible case and pretties ’em up . They also do the retail packaging . This costs them about $ 5 . They plow around and strike Microsoft up for $ 100 each . So Microsoft credibly pulls about $ 80 of profit out of each one ( though Amazon ’s got them on sale for$150 right on now ) .

While that ’s a hell of a leeway , it ’s actually less than I figure , because I did n’t expect Microsoft to eat $ 100 on a drive a consumer would pay $ 45 $ 70 for , even with the little bit of credit card and software tacked on . Granted , these are all just estimate by iSuppli , so it ’s potential they ’re paying less and are reaping in totally obscene profits on each drive sell , but I in reality do n’t savor assuming the worst all the time . [ MultiplayerviaKotaku ]

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