The new X-Box 360 is coming out, and parents and gamers everywhere will be asking themselves: should I buy it now? If not, how long is a good time to wait? The answer will depend on your financial situation – but for most people, it’s probably good advice to wait for a year or so if you can.

The first few months of any new gaming system are mainly for the die-hard gamers. Getting a full X-Box 360 system with enough extras to really be able to play it could cost you in the $600 range, even if you’re only getting a few games. For most parents or gamers who don’t have a serious salary, that’s just too much to justify. Even many of the “extras” are really necessary to playing the games – without a memory card, you can’t save your game, for example, or you might want that extra controller to be able to play against friends. The real reason to wait, however, is because prices for new game systems nearly always go down dramatically within a year or so after they are introduced.

The reason: a combination of competition and economies of scale. The competition factor is simple – the new Playstation will be out within the next year, and Microsoft will likely be forced to cut prices to maintain their market share. They don’t want people buying the other system, and they can stop that from happening by making a new deal later on. Economies of scale will also be a factor by then – this is the basic principle that the more of something you make, the cheaper it is to make each individual one on average. So, after they have tooled up the factories to make large runs of the X-Box 360, they’ll be able to lower the price on each individual one.

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