November 10th 2009 2:01 pm PT

Is the price of the Wireless-G adapter going down, or is the SKU being discontinued?

LOL $99

Hrm. I may just have to pick this up. w00t!

And convert my whole home network to N.

Using wireless for gaming?
LOLNO

Cool! I love the CHOICE of having to pay $79 for the Wireless-G adapter something that the other two consoles have built in. Good job Microsoft! It’s funny how the best console deal at the beginning of this generation launch has become the worst.

@Robborboy

You obviously have no idea what you’re talking about. I’ve been running wireless since it first became available and a properly configured network still gives tight latencies. The fanboi “wireless sux for gaming lol” argument is old and oft disproved. Get on with the times.

802.11n is required for wireless instant streaming of 1080p vids from the zune video marketplace

$99?? HAHAHAHAHAHA PASS!

@Seleste A properly configured network eh? Then pray tell. What would one of those involve? Opened ports? A lack of WPA passkey? Running a ping from 360 to router over a hardline>wireless. Every time. “Tight latencies”? Maybe, better than a hardline? Not a snowball’s chance in hell. Especially when you take in account various forms of interference from other devices, and thick, insulated walls.

I wonder if anybody would actually upgrade to this. I still can’t beleive I was suckered into paying $100 for a wireless adapter in the first place.

Doesn’t this come standard on the PS3 which is now the same price as the xbox?

@Robborboy What the hell are you on about? No open ports, NO LIVE. Whether you are wired or wireless this is true. Why would you not use WPA? My gaming has been 802.11G since I got the damned console WITH WPA (I use a bridge, not the wifi adapter) and I don’t have any issues at all. I very rarely see any lag at all. Nothing that makes any of my gaming unplayable. Better latency than a cabled connection? No probably not, but then if you can’t tell the difference why the hell would anyone care? I’ve been MP gaming online since 1996, and I’ve seen my average connection go from 300ms to around 40ms, so yes, I know HOW to tell the difference. It just isn’t noticable without using kit to monitor it. As for interference and thick walls? yeah fine – maybe in your house, but the nice thick recently insulated walls in my 100+ yr old home don’t cause me a jot of lag – it’s all about where you place your kit and how it’s configured – just as Seleste stated. Stop being a perfectionist dude – Wireless gaming is MORE than a realistic future goal – it’s been working for years. SECURELY I might add.

@Robborboy. Ya know what? I got a little over aggro in my tone there and I apologise. I accept that you might have a house in which a wireless connection is not feasable for gaming, but that is not true for the vast majority of people, so you too need to revise your tone a tad.

On the subject of accessories, where are the Memory Units in the UK?

Game doesn’t have them (in the 4 stores I checked, or online) Gamestation (2 stores and online) Play.com, amazon.co.uk, Supermarkets don’t have them. I could buy one on Ebay but it’ll likely be fake and disabled at the end of the month.

@SaraphTC There may have been a bit of an overload in sarcasm on my post. Thus the ports and encryption post. However, with wireless there are way too many variable. Anywhere I have an electronic device that utilizes an network connection in some form, I have a hardline ran to it. With the little work requred in drilling two holes per cable and running it uner the floor, the rewards are completely worth it.

I’ll stick with my gigabit wired thanks.

@Major Nelson

When will these new adapters be available in Canada???

I do not want to buy one and find out its one of the older G adapters. Especially if it is going to cost me $100 for one, which i cannot return or exchange once the package is opened.

I am tired of having to redo my wireless setup on my laptop every day because the 360 cannot connect (vista’s wired/wireless networking bridge is a pain, but it works most of the time)…

@Robborboy

The added latency of wireless instead of Ethernet is in the range of 1-3ms, something you will never miss in any game.

Personally I have my laptop connected to my wireless router in bridge mode (So it’s easy to Forward my ports), and then my laptop connects to my Xbox via Ethernet, works a treat.

My wireless router is at one end of the house, I’m at the other, there is about 4 walls between me and it, and I get a constantly strong, clear signal with maximum speed.

The biggest hit to latency is usually the server your connecting to or the other players, in such a case you have no hope in fixing it.

****

As for this wireless adapter… I’ll pass, if the old version is selling cheaply enough I’ll pick it up, but for now I’m happy with my current (and free) set-up.

Hard wired everytime. Much better, cheaper, faster for online play (less lag. That’s a fact. Google it fools), and less chance of loosing a connection.
Ethernet connection everytime. !!!

?????

twisted poke,

The PS3 uses G band, not N.

100 dollars is ridiculous. Who prices this stuff? $150 for a 120 gig hard drive? 250 gig for 60 on new egg right now?

I love my xbox but not bending over.

FIX YOUR PRICES MS. STOP BEING GREEDY JERKS.

Adapters is also a nice addon. Maybe an idea for people with not much money: with an wireless adapter in you pc and a Ethernet port and the Win7 / Vista Brigde function xbox live is working great.

100 bones …. suck it

Ok, now like Surly said, let’s see if there are any price changes to the current wireless adapter.

With N+? Sweeeeet!! lol

Black color only? Don’t you care about all white Xbox 360 sold?

Wow! For $99.99 I’ll by two of them. Yeah, right.

When the “rumor” leaked a few weeks ago (by a Gamestop interview), it was also rumored that the original would drop to $79.99. While the prices still seem a bit high, you have to admit that there really isn’t any other wireless adapter (especially N) that is that compact and USB. I have a Belkin wireless USB for my computer and it is bigger, has a “dock”, and the software is a major pain (likes to reset itself…though that might just be due to windows updates!).

Major,

Can you let the people who set these prices know, that we refuse to buy your products when they’re priced like this. The other consoles come with this built in, why do we have to pay an extra $100 for the same wireless functionality as other console users?

If you really add up what its costing us Xbox 360 users, we’re getting such a poor deal. I pay for live, its a little pricey, but I think it’s almost worth it for the easy online matchmaking. I’ve paid for avatar items, I’ve bought many arcade titles, I’ve given you guys alot of my hard earned money. So why should I now have to pay $100 for something that is considered a ‘as-standard’ feature of other hardware manufacturers?

Your rain of the good games is slowly coming to an end, PS3 is starting to catch up, they have superior hardware, the winning format for the HD disc based entertainment built in and almost all the multi-platform titles coming for it are just as good as 360 versions. So when my new elite dies, which lets face it, it IS going to. I probably won’t want to bother sticking with Microsoft Xbox 360 because the PS3 is so much more for my money and I value my money. I hope this is taken as one of the thousands of posts people make threatening to leave Xbox and go to PS3, its not. I just want to highlight that the Xbox 360 isn’t such a great deal anymore.

Oh and hiking the price up of Arcades in UK from £130 to £160, bad move. You guys just don’t care about keeping your customers at all do you lately?

cat 6 FTW!

I don’t understand why the WiFi adapter is always priced so high. I bought a N band bridge for $49 from best buy and I run everything in my entertainment center thru that and it works awesome. I had to buy my wife a wireless adapter for her desktop and it was Linksys USB N band adapter and I don’t remember paying more then $60 for it and it was tiny.

i’ll keep my wireless adapter that i have now… why spend 99$ for N support that i don’t have… and anyway cable modems only have a 10 or 100mbs ehternet port.

@KP ScuzzyBunny

There most certainly are 802.11n USB dongles that are smaller or comparable to the 360 one. Granted the two external antennas is arguably better than internal, but its still vastly overpriced in comparison.

http://www.play.com/PC/PCs/4-/5985896/LM-Technologies-LM004-Wi-Fi-802-11n-Wireless-USB-Adapter/Product.html?ptsl=1&ob=Price&fb=0

That said, its still better than PS3. My PS3 is the only device in the house which has problems accessing my WiFi connection. The speed test reports full speed but actual usage things like VidZone and Playstation Home load ten times slower, literally, than when plugged in wired. It also barely handles streaming SD content from my PC, try to fast forward and it falls over. Overall, the PS3 wireless is completely useless on some PS3s. It does vary as I know people who have the same problem and other people where its fine.

Overall though, at least on 360 it means if you have poor reception you can stick a USB extension on the end and try positioning it where you get better reception, without having to move the 360 too. Having it NOT built-in was a good idea, ripping people off on the price was not.

Like everything else MS sells, it’s overpriced.

I have 360 Elite, PS3 Slim, and a Qosmio laptop all wireless in my Family Room. I have not lost the signal to my PS3 or the PS3 Phat I had before it nor have I lost it from my Laptop. But my 360 drops 1 or 2 times a day. I have a Linksys N router. If I upgrade to this new device will it solve my connection problems?

Thanks in advance.

$99 Microsoft you really need help in pricing your accessories, it’s just a usb wireless adapter, no different from any other wireless usb adapter on the market, tho it’s slapped with a Microsoft logo, that still isn’t worth $99. $39.99 would still be pricey but many more would buy it at that price. Same ol MS over price your accessories including your hard drives, the $120 gig is way over priced yet you expect Games on Demand to ever be successful, watch it go the way of Xbox Originals. Why not just sell the hard drive enclosure and let users purchase their own 2.5″5400 rpm sata hard drive and place it in the enclosure? My 320 gig 7200rpm hdd only cost me $79 on newegg.com and a 500 gig 5400rpm hdd is only $99 or so. I love my 360, but with the PS3 priced at only $299.99 with built in blu-ray, built in wi-fi and user replace-able hard drives, and netflix instant streaming coming, the 360 doesn’t look so good compared to it now does it? My suggestion, scrap the Arcade unit, drop the Elite to $199.99 and bring a 250 gig unit with built in wi-fi for $299.99 and call it a day. Microsoft you won’t find your console in second place long, before you were 8 million unit ahead, now only 6 million, I used to suggest users get a 360 over PS3 but with crap like this being pried so high I just don’t any more.

Xbox 360 means over priced.
Over priced accessories
Over priced Games on Demand Service (No way a digital only, non transferable game should be priced equivalent to a physical copy that can be resold, traded, lent to a friend etc…
Must pay to access free features like Facebook, twitter, and last f.m. when it can be done free via the PS3′s browser, those apps should be free across the board silver/gold.
I know I’m ranting but I’m just upset at Microsoft this generation, and tired of of the pricing of things.

LM big fat hairy AO @ $99! Think I’ll get two.

I was hoping this would be cheaper. Time to string some ethernet cable through the house…

@Major Nelson

When will these new adapters be available in Canada???

I do not want to buy one and find out its one of the older G adapters. Especially if it is going to cost me $100 for one, which i cannot return or exchange once the package is opened.

I am tired of having to redo my wireless setup on my laptop every day because the 360 cannot connect (vista’s wired/wireless networking bridge is a pain, but it works most of the time)…

Also, the old adapter will only be available while supplies last at a price of $80.

I know it’s not much guys but at least it’s a bit cheaper…
http://www.costco.com/Browse/Product.aspx?Prodid=11501393&whse=BC&Ne=4000000&eCat=BC|25429|25532&N=4020035&Mo=82&No=2&Nr=P_CatalogName:BC&cat=60313&Ns=P_Price|1||P_SignDesc1&lang=en-US&Sp=C&topnav=

You realize this is half the price of the god damn console?

It’s half the price of a console. It’s just too high.

LOL.

Wireless adapter is the same price as the console!!!

@ Ganon255

It’s the same price as the console!!!

You Americans can pick up an Arcade for $100 (+$100 gift card) @ Walmart.

Wish we had a deal like that in the UK – i really need a 360 now.

You can get similar form factor products for 20 bucks for the PC. MS’ excuse about size being the reason for the price has been bs since day one.

I use wired for all because I dont want microwaves flying around my house more than they need to, so, hmm.. in that respect this thing will save lives!

I wonder about the wireless controllers.. we hold them right near our testies! :O

Major when will Canada be getting this device? only listing i can find is for Amazon US.

I saw this at Real Canadian Superstore a few days ago. Didn’t see the price on the new one, but the old G/B/A one was marked down to $80. What a bargain.

100 dollars is about the price of a 3rd party LAN to Wireless adaptor.

The fact that it’s STILL not built into the 360 though, is disappointing. For $199 you can get the Wii which connects wirelessly to your router.

twistedpoke:
“Doesn’t this come standard on the PS3 which is now the same price as the xbox?”

yep. When Microsoft didn’t respond by lowering the price of their system by 50 bucks, or upping the content of the console, it was disappointing.

It was by not paying attention to the competitors that Sony lost market share to Microsoft… Now Microsoft appears to be doing the same thing. Only time will tell if Sony gains on Microsoft with the current market conditions.

@Lucky 13 X: Yeah I believe its dropping about $10 WOW go figure!I love when I see morons buying these things. Just like the hard drive, THE MOST EXPENSIVE TECHNOLOGY anywhere. But unlike a hard drive YOU DONT NEED THIS PEOPLE!!!

Bought the Linksys N adapter over a year ago for $59. Why would we pay $99?

This is going to cost $180 in Australia. For $299 we can buy a new Arcade console.

Microsoft, you’re kidding aren’t you? What a joke. No wonder so many people are turning to Sony. I’ll be selling my console on eBay for $80 including 10 games if anyone is interested.

If the price of the G adapter is what everyone is saying, about $80, that’s seriously dissapointing. I would have bought one for $50 or less, even though cheaper options are out there. I just wanted one for when I take it over to LAN at a friend’s house. Makes things easier if I don’t need to set up a bridge. Ah well, another lost sale for MS.

Seriously, I’d buy a lot more of the add-ons if they were priced even remotely within reason. Doesn’t make me hopeful on the price of the Natal.

Greedy bastards.

Well… the HDD and now the Wireless Stick can be bought for a non-reasonable price (in difference to same accesoires for a PC)…

Maybe the M$-Staff look at those like “Special Editions” (as in games). They should start selling those as Steelbook Editions or maybe add a NVG or 30″-Doll of Bill Gates (HDD) and Steve Ballmer (Wireless Adapter)…

I’ll hang onto my cable… for the Xbox. PS3 will stay wireless. Love the build-in stuff.

cool i’ll get 1

I was thinking of going wireless since my kitten likes to play with the ethernet cables, but MS has made up my mind for me and so easily O_o. I will just have to move my cables around.

I’ll get it if I can trade my Xbox 360 Wireless G Adapter in for the Xbox 360 Wireless N Adapter for at least half off, if not then sorry guys but its not worth it. :/

im getting that

This will probably make it compatible with my wireless router.

I like it. Sleek, black. The price is alright for me.

Waiting to see how much the A/B/G version drops to.

Forgot to add, any chance of this being part of the Xbox 360 Elite combo?

[sarcasm]$99 only? What a great deal! Microsoft really cares about us![/sarcasm]

hahahahahahahahaha!!!!!!!!!!

$99…HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

100 bucks for a piece of plastic and an antenna.

What a boatload of elf tits.

lol – $99????

Unbelievable.

All of the profits must be going into the back of major nelsons pockets

I have had two xbox 360s pack in on me the first was a disk read error and the other red-ringed, the battery packs last a year tops. The hard drives are shockingly expensive at £1 per GB, The original wireless adapter was not worth the £55 , lets be honest here your track record on the hardware front is piss poor.

Instead of driving your customers away, you should be offering competative prices this will keep customers happy this generation and also for the next,and not pushing your loyal customers onto other harware that takes this into account.

MS needs to charge a reasonable price for their games on demand and wireless adapter

Vote with your wallets! I already did, canceled my Gold membership after having it for at least 5 years. Purchased MW2 on PS3, and won’t buy anything else on the 360 unless it’s a must have exclusive.

$99? No thank you.

$99? No thank you.

$99? I mean, when elsewhere in the world one can buy USB WiFi dongles for as low as $20 you release this?! I truly want to hear how MS spins this one up. I remember what the spin machine did for justifying the high price tags of the HDDs: “we get special batches that have tight access timings and blah blah blah”. Is certification an issue? power? the plastics and ID are too expensive?

I gotta say, doing a quick look around the webs, that one can purchase a wireless ethernet adapter/bridge for far less. A quick Newegg search gives me a $49.90 D-Link DGL-3420.

DROP THE PRICE DOWN

Wow, really tired of the rip off accessories. Come on I just got a wireless N USB for $19.99.

Wow, what a rip-off.

How much?? No doubt it will still be stupidly expensive in the UK… Seriously, where do you get these prices from?? Do you have a lucky-dip raffle where you all stick an amount in a hat and just pull out the first one??

Think I’ll be sticking to CAT5 for now… Another stupidly overpriced accessory, just like the useless “Play and Charge” kits which never charge when plugged in via the cable, yet the battery packs charge fine when plugged into the standalone charger unit… (Yet you say its a faulty battery pack on a NEWLY purchased kit and say buy another…) Over priced Hard Drives which offer value for money (£ per GB) from 10 years ago.. and you give the usual rubbish about access times and latency’s blah blah (FFS its a 5400rpm drive!!) And don’t get me started on this new 250Gb drive which you are only selling WITH a Console (I’ve already filled my 120Gb drive…)

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not totally anti-xbox, I like the system, the games, the whole online experience (Rather pay for a well managed system in that respect) But the price you charge for Accessories… You really need to rethink your strategy if you want to be competitive nowadays…

I can kinda see the reason for the price – most wireless N bridges I found are above $75. It is still a tad steep though.

Here’s how to solve this one: Find some low-priced N routers (online or locally), then check to see if they’re supported by DD-WRT’s firmware (http://www.dd-wrt.com/site/support/router-database). Set it up as a regular router or bridge it to your existing router. Cheaper and considerably more configurable and functional than Microsoft’s overpriced dongle.

So, how long before Microsoft starts disabling unlicensed bridges from the Ethernet port?

Jeez, save your money.
Just keep your router/gateway in your entertainment center with your Xbox. Then all you need is 1′ ethernet cable for the best signal possible.
My PCs can use the wireless.
Xbox + cat6 FTW.

The more I see how M$ Prices items such as games on demand and wireless antennas the less I buy stuff. To say $99 is high is a terrible under statement. A device like this should cost around $20…its a frigging antenna that Sony and nintendo include in their systems.

Neither Sony or Nintendo include wireless N in their systems and there is no way to get it even if you want it. The price of this adapter is high, but it is NOT something that’s built into competing machines. Unless you want to stream full 1080p content, there’s no need real for this anyway, but at least you can buy it if you need it.

Just a bizarre, bizarre price. We all know that MS and Sony sell consoles cheap so that they can make money on games. This is a tactic which has worked astonishingly well over the years.

So why not do the same with accessories like this? If somebody doesn’t want to spend half the price of the console again to get online, then MS can’t sell them a Live membership, can’t sell them Arcade titles, can’t sell them (hugely overpriced) Games on Demand, can’t sell them (hugely overpriced) Zune movies on demand, can’t sell them DLC, can’t show them adverts, etc., etc.

If MS had any sense whatsoever they would give the wireless adaptors away for free if somebody takes out a Gold Live subscription – they’d make their costs back incredibly quickly. And like gym subcriptions, or Magazine subscriptions, the wonderful thing from their point of view is that when people start paying monthly subscriptions, they can rarely be bothered to cancel them – it’s money for old rope.

Just a bizarre, bizarre price. We all know that MS and Sony sell consoles cheap so that they can make money on games. This is a tactic which has worked astonishingly well over the years.

So why not do the same with accessories like this? If somebody doesn’t want to spend half the price of the console again to get online, then MS can’t sell them a Live membership, can’t sell them Arcade titles, can’t sell them (hugely overpriced) Games on Demand, can’t sell them (hugely overpriced) Zune movies on demand, can’t sell them DLC, can’t show them adverts, etc., etc.

If MS had any sense whatsoever they would give the wireless adaptors away for free if somebody takes out a Gold Live subscription – they’d make their costs back incredibly quickly. And like gym subcriptions, or Magazine subscriptions, the wonderful thing from their point of view is that when people start paying monthly subscriptions, they can rarely be bothered to cancel them – it’s money for old rope.

Same goes for the Hard Drives by the way. If people fill up their memory cards or hard drives then they aren’t buying Games on Demand, Arcade Games, DLC, films, etc.

MS should be falling over themselves to make it as easy as possible for people to get their hands on more storage space as cheaply as possible, so that they can start filling it with stuff bought from Microsoft.

Remember that at the moment Microsoft has a monopoly of all downloadable items for the 360. As companies move away from physical media (see the PSP Go for example) then competition authorities are bound to wake up to the fact that it is an extroadinarily bad idea to let just one company set the price for all the content on their console.

MS should be making the most of this period before they are forced to let other people sell digital content for their console (which will of course start forcing prices down to a fair level).

Get as many wireless adaptors and as much storage capacity into as many people’s hands as cheaply as possible, as soon as possible!

You should keep the original adapter and drop the price of the old one to 40 bucks.

if the price goes down then i will think bout it.I will just stick to the wired connection.for now

i’d love to have this but Microsoft prices this like they don’t want people to buy it or something.

As a network engineer, I find this price laughable. There are so many other ways to do this it isn’t funny. Personally, I ran a nice CAT6 to my entertainment center, but you could do internet connection sharing with your laptop or a second ($10) nic in a desktop close by, a DD-WRT enabled router ($50). Major, I know you don’t do the pricing, but this is really getting old. It’s no wonder you have people hacking hard drives and your systems – the prices you guys are charging are ridiculous for what you get.

mo money mo money mo money…it is the M$ way after all…always telling us users ‘more grip, less lip’ I am getting an Elite unit and need a transfer cable. Xbox support twittered me a response letting me know it was going to cost along with the balls to ask me to rate them. This, along with everything else, is the continuation of the x-ploitation of long time users. I may be new to the Live aspects but I do not know how much longer that is going to last along with even more disgruntled users. My .02 in this tight economic time.