Re: Funny pricing
Apples and oranges. With the cloud hosting, MS have a fixed monthly cost plus other overheads that need to be handled, so they put up your monthly cost. There's a lot of uncertainties to take care of, plus they need to retain their ongoing profit margin.
With XBox, they have inventory that has already been produced (possibly some from before the pound plummeted), and a known date for when the sales would happen. Furthermore, they can sell at a loss because they hope to make money back from you in the future (games revenue, Live subscription, peripherals, etc.).
The only commonality between the two things is that you shouldn't be surprised if they also increase the cost of a Live subscription for the same reasons.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
