PS2 Price May Fall, Gamecube Staying Put

mrquackers writes: "Looks like the price war in the console gaming world is starting a bit early. With Microsoft expected to announce a drop in the price of the Xbox to $199 next Monday at E3, Sony's rumored to be cutting PlayStation 2 prices as early as tomorrow. Meanwhile, Nintendo says it won't be making ANY price cuts before or during the show -- though it's not ruling one out for later in the year." Update: 05/14 18:01 GMT by T : An anonymous reader points out this CNN story indicating that the PS2 cut is official.

Comments

Ninento doing well in Europe: 400,000 sales

[Anonymous Coward]

Nintendo just put out this press release in the UK... the company seems very happy (excuse the PR hype, it's a press release after all) - interesting fact is the healthy 2.3 games sold per machine.

400,000 NINTENDO GAMECUBES sold in launch week

May 14 2002 - NINTENDO GAMECUBES have scarcely rested on the shop shelves across Europe before heading straight out of the door. 400,000 NINTENDO GAMECUBES have been snapped up by European gamers - that's 80% of the consoles that were in stores across Europe for launch. Many stores sold out during launch week, however more NINTENDO GAMECUBES are being delivered daily from warehouses to replenish stocks in store, and another 500,000 are being shipped across Europe over the next seven weeks.

Games sales have also been outstanding. On average gamers are buying 2.3 games with each NINTENDO GAMECUBE bought, with the best selling games being Nintendo's Luigi's Mansion and Star Wars Rogue Leader: Rogue Squadron II. The average age of a NINTENDO GAMECUBE owner is 23 years.

This initial launch success will be followed by the release of the classic beat-em up game, Super Smash Bros. Melee on May 24, which sold over one million copies in just 9 weeks in Japan. This will be closely followed by the already legendary Pikmin, which launches across Europe on 14th June. By summer there will be a total of fifty games available for NINTENDO GAMECUBE.

Andy Williams, Nintendo UK General Manager says: "The hype around the launch of NINTENDO GAMECUBE was massive and we are delighted with the support the trade has put behind it. It has been, without doubt, a very successful launch and this is set to continue as we bring in more stock on a regular basis in the forthcoming weeks."

Re:Nope!

[Locutus]

bull. Internet Explorer was originally licensed by Spyglass. It was the Mosaic source code. Spyglass got paid for every copy sold and when Microsoft started giving it away and refused to pay Spyglass (because the wen't "selling" it) then Spyglass pulled out their contract and requested an audit of Microsofts books.

IE was not always free. It was used as a hammer to kill Netscape.

The difference here is that Microsoft can only reduce the cost of the console and can't give it away ( no precedence ). They could bundle a bunch of games and essentially give the console away but the games would have to be darn good and from what I hear, they look good but play badly.

LoB