After Sony announced that they’d drop the price of the PS3 by a cool Ben Franklin, Microsoft is expected to follow in similar fashion according to Wedbush Morgan-analyst Michael Pachter.
He predicts that Microsoft will drop the Elite from $479 to $399, the Premium from $399 to $349, and the Core from $299 to $249 in order to keep Sony from gaining any market share.
If Microsoft were to follow these speculative price cuts to the letter, they might even find themselves gaining ground on the Wii as the Xbox 360 Core system slides down into the same price point as Nintendo’s popular console.
Late last year people were speculating that Nintendo would drop the price of the Wii to $199 by this spring. Well, it’s summer now and the Wii still costs $249 and is still hard to find. A price drop by Microsoft might force a price drop by Nintendo after all, although it’d also be nice if Nintendo could just keep the things in stock. Dropping the price by $50 wouldn’t help inventory levels any.
All in all, console price wars are great for consumers, so let’s hope this latest shot across the bow by Sony gets Microsoft and Nintendo all riled up.
Microsoft to slash price of Xbox 360 [GamesIndustry.biz]