Microsoft Officially Slashes Japan Xbox Price

securitas writes "Reuters' Daisuke Wakabayashi reports that Microsoft will 'cut the price of its Xbox game console by a third in Japan, undercutting rival Sony Corp's recently reduced PlayStation 2 price ahead of the holiday shopping season.' The price cut takes effect on Nov. 20 when it will be reduced to 16,800 yen (US$155) from 24,800 yen (US$228). The cut comes a week after Sony's 20 percent cut in its PS2 price to 19,800 yen (US$182), which takes effect Nov. 13. (Gamespot brief) Does this hint at a holiday price cut for North America, too?" We mentioned price cut rumors for Xbox in Japan a couple of weeks back.

Comments

Re:whatever happened to the redesigned xbox?

[PainKilleR-CE]

if MS is going to beat Sony's ps3 to market with their xbox next, they're running short on their window to release a refresher product.

The PSOne redesign was only released about a year before the PS2, I don't see why we'd expect redesigns of current-generation products before the end of 2004 given that the next-generation consoles are expected in the 2005/2006 timeframe. Afterall, the redesigns are usually about taking advantage of the consolidation of the various parts in the system (something that the XBox can't really take as much advantage of given the fairly standard PC parts, though it could use smaller drives and a smaller motherboard) to release something smaller (and cheaper) for the low-price end-of-life run before, during, and after the release of the new system, not about revitalizing the product line in it's mid-life while it's still the current generation.

Re:MS is nervous

[PainKilleR-CE]

When Sony jumped into the market with the PSOne, they didn't have a long term plan to slowly take market share away from Nintendo and Sega - they aimed to corner the market for that generation and move on from there. I think that you're overstating the future for the XBox - it certainly could go down the way you describe but it's not as likely as it seems you believe.

There's a difference between the market Sony came into and the market Microsoft came into, though. Sony saw a market that wasn't being reached by either Nintendo or Sega: 16-25, or even older, males that grew up with Nintendo and Sega but wanted something 'cool' instead of the same old stuff. They also saw that Sega had some of the right ideas (at the time) with arcade ports, and Sony made an arcade version of the PS1 to make those ports easy (much like Sega did with some of their consoles). Further, Sony saw that the optical discs could work if you used a memory card to store data. Then Sony signed up Square and sealed the deal with a lot of the previous Nintendo owners that wanted to see more FF games, and FFVII surpassed expectations for sure, bringing in many people that had never played any of the 6 games before it.

Microsoft, on the other hand, saw a market with potential to get them into people's living rooms, especially with Sony marketing their machines with CD and DVD player functionality. Microsoft stepped it up by letting you rip your CDs to the hard drive and letting you save games on the hard drive, reducing the memory card to a system for transporting saved games rather than actually saving them in the first place (which may have hurt MS in terms of all of those nickel-n-dime peripheral purchases other console makers thrive on). MS didn't have an untapped market they were aiming for, they were just trying to get the machines in people's homes, and get developers to put games on the machines.

I don't think Microsoft is going to be a company that gets a devoted following (like Nintendo) since they have not really been a great first person game developer (outside of the third party companies that they've bought) so they're not going to have a guaranteed base they can work from.

It's unlikely unless their in-house developers (those third parties they've bought) produce some memorable franchises that people want to see more of. Perhaps Halo can do that, but I'm not really sure, and though I remember the original Crimson Skies, that's certainly not the appeal of the new game for me. KOTOR, well, they'll never own Star Wars ;)