If you are a Japanese gamer and were surprised when the Xbox 360 managed to actually "sell out" in Japan earlier this month, there’s now some even more shocking news to report. No, don’t worry, you will still be able to pick up a console relatively shortly should you want one; but you’ll now be dropping far less coin.
Microsoft’s Japanese division just announced that, in a move to try and outshine the Wii and its absurd popularity, they will be cutting the price of the entire line of Xbox 360 SKUs … by up to 30%.
Beginning on an as-of-yet-unspecified-date, or when Microsoft manages to restock retailers (or around Infinite Undiscovery‘s release date on Sept. 11th), the lower-end HDD-less Arcade SKU will drop a total of ¥8,000 (US$73.50) to ¥19,800 (US$182). For those keeping track, this will make the Xbox 360 console the cheapest next-gen platform in Japan as it is now lower than the Wii which retails for ¥25,000, and the PS3 which currently sits at ¥39,800.
The mid-range 60GB Pro will also be dropped ¥5,000 down to ¥29,800 (US$274) and the 120GB Elite will now retail for ¥60,000 (US$552), a drop of nearly ¥8,000. Wow.
Hit the jump for the announcement.
TOKYO (Thomson Financial) – The Japanese unit of U.S. software giant Microsoft Corp
plans to slash the price of its Xbox 360 home video game console by
nearly 30 percent in a move that will undercut the more popular Wii
machine from Nintendo Co, the Nikkei reported on Monday, without citing sources.
Microsoft
(Nasdaq:
MSFT -
news
-
people)
will lower the price of the Xbox 360′s Arcade model by 8,000 yen
($73.50) to 19,800 yen, making the device the first among competing
consoles to carry a price tag less than 20,000 yen, the business daily
said.
The Arcade model, which sells for 27,800 yen, is not equipped with
a hard-disk drive and is the least expensive of the Xbox 360′s three
models.
The company will reduce the prices of the two other models as well by 5,000 yen to 8,000 yen, the report said.
Nintendo
(other-otc:
NTDOY.PK -
news
-
people
)’s Wii machine, which leads the domestic market for home video game consoles, is priced at 25,000 yen, while Sony Corp
(nyse:
SNE -
news
-
people
) unit Sony Computer Entertainment Inc sells the PlayStation 3 for 39,800 yen.
($1=108.82 yen)
