Possible PS2 Price Portent Pondered

Londovir writes "Could Nintendo soon be sharing shelf space at the $99 rack? According to an article on IGN.com, an internal source at Target claims to have received printed fliers with the Playstation 2 listed at $99. If you remember from an earlier story from September, it was an advance newspaper ad from Target (again), as well as a leaked scan of a Wal-Mart ad, that told the world about the GameCube's price before it happened. Given how the GameCube is outselling the PS2 & XBox - would a price drop so low be so unexpected? One last tidbit to contemplate: Sony is ready to roll the manufacturing plants for their smaller 90 nanometer PS2 CPU. Maybe that price drop isn't so unbelievable after all..."

Comments

Re:Will this kill the XBox?

[drinkypoo]

Aside from processing power and graphics capability which are if not equivalent (though not identical) the PS2 is only half the machine the Xbox is. Remember that the Xbox has a hard drive and ethernet as it ships, it has better video output capabilities, it has four controller ports. To get all this on your PS2, even priced at $99, will put it well above the Xbox's price. Add to this the underground credibility of the Xbox due to its hacking potential - It might say Microsoft on it, but tons of people who would never run Windows own an Xbox and are not only using it to run Linux - I'd say that they'll have to do a whole lot more than this to beat up the Xbox.

If Sony wants to kill the Xbox they will have to bring out a version of the PS2 which comes with the hard drive and ethernet interface, which can both run linux and play games on the internet, and which costs no more than the Xbox. Obviously their PSX system (It is terribly ignorant of Sony to name their new system the PSX, given that their old system is commonly known as PSX, but that's a subject for another rant I guess) is not going to be any kind of competitor, as it will price itself right out of existence for almost everyone.