X-Box Europe Price Cut...

Source: http://www.computerandvideogames.com/news/news_story.php?id=28072

EXCLUSIVE: XBOX PRICE SLASHED IN EUROPE ON APRIL 26

Blink. You read it right. Microsoft has just confirmed that the price of its console is about to fall by £100, with full compensation for those who bought at the original price

5:48 Microsoft is to drop the price of Xbox in Europe by £100 to £199 on April 26, less than six weeks after the launch of the machine. Slow pan-European sales prompted calls from industry leaders in the last week to drop the price immediately. Microsoft has obviously had its ears wide open.
"At 6.00am today, we\'ll be reducing the price of the Xbox to €299, £199, effective from April 26," said Chris Lewis, UK divisional director for Xbox retail. "There are no announcements, or any plans to make price changes elsewhere. It is a European-only announcement at this stage."

The speed of the move will come as a shock to many, but Microsoft has merely pointed to its wish to remain competitive in an increasingly tough market.

"When we announced the price back in Cannes at X01 [In October, 2001 – Ed], the terrain was slightly different to that which we have now," said Lewis. "Nintendo [GameCube] wasn\'t imminent, and certainly PlayStation 2 was at a different price point. We were always committed to being competitive.

"For us to remain competitive, and to allow even more people to get the best value and get the chance to play with Xbox, we want to remove any obstacles to success and change our price-point now."

Lewis went on to reiterate Microsoft\'s commitment to the console market for the long-term.

Obviously wary of causing chagrin among early adopters - already at least £345 lighter due to buying at the original European price - Microsoft also confirmed today a system for refunding gamers who supported the format from the off. Anyone who has already bought an Xbox, or buys one in Europe up to April 25, will be eligible to receive two free games and a free controller in the wake of the cut. Honestly and truly, kids, you cannot say fairer than that.

Xbox games retail at £45. Xbox controllers sell for £25. That\'s £115 in total. That\'s free money. Say "thank you Mr Microsoft". "We want to reward the early adoption," said Lewis.

Lewis denied that the price for the machine was pitched too high for Europe initially. "When we first made our pricing decisions in late summer last year, we felt that at that time – we were twice the power of PlayStation 2, we had a better games line-up, the box was future proof, we were built with broadband and there are a whole lot of online announcements coming at E3 - we offered great value for money," he said. "We still do.

"What we recognise now is that we need to remain competitive. To that end, we\'ve made this decision and we\'ve made it for Europe. We feel that we\'ve made the right decision at the right time."

Xbox Europe is planning to head into E3 bouyed by extra sales garnered from the drop, with the general focus for the show looking increasingly likely to be online play. "What that does do is leave the way very clear for us to have some good discussions around the games and remove any obstacles that might be debated around the price," said Lewis

Mmmm.. may fancy one of these now as a second machine.. what do you guys think?

Don\'t be too quick yet, Sony are not stupid.  What will MS do If Sony drops the price of the PS2 by a big margin?  Will they (MS) be in the same boat yet again?  This is going to be the biggest console war yet:bounce:

war between nintendo and xbox?

sony is already sitting at the finish line with a 40oz. and a macanudo

wow, m$ is losing a ton of money on each console sold

Money is NOT made on consoles, even at the current price. I remember when I went to Microsoft Aust. headquarters for training, they said that we need to sell 3.2 games for each consoles sold to make a decent profit.

Unless they are making the consoles cheaper now, they are stabbing themselves in the back. And yes, XBOX in AUST is going down to $599 1st May.

Does anyone know when the price of a PS2 dropped from £269.99 to £199.99? Was it around November last year?

I\'m having a disagreement with Sony at the moment, I\'m trying to invoice them £100 for my loss as they dropped their price after I paid a ludicrous amount, I think I\'m annoying them!

I believe this has been posted already:
http://www.psx2central.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=20743

EDIT: Nevermind, just saw that this was moved. Someone should merge it with the other one...

[GmanJoe]

Originally posted by ##RaCeR##
Money is NOT made on consoles, even at the current price. I remember when I went to Microsoft Aust. headquarters for training, they said that we need to sell 3.2 games for each consoles sold to make a decent profit.

Unless they are making the consoles cheaper now, they are stabbing themselves in the back. And yes, XBOX in AUST is going down to $599 1st May.

True that most of the profit is from software sales. But Sony is making a profit from each PS2 console sold....unlike Xbox.

Originally posted by StAnZo
Lewis denied that the price for the machine was pitched too high for Europe initially. "When we first made our pricing decisions in late summer last year, we felt that at that time – we were twice the power of PlayStation 2, we had a better games line-up, the box was future proof, we were built with broadband and there are a whole lot of online announcements coming at E3 - we offered great value for money," he said. "We still do.

Oh boy those guys can sure make me laugh!

Sony is combining the EE&GS chips (into one chip, duh) so PS2 will become much cheaper to manufacture plus they can make 3x as many.

Price war has started, maybe they can lower the price of the games?
:cool:

I\'m pretty sure that Sony will drop the price of its PS2... Xbox can\'t do anything!

mmh, I can\'t really see Sony dropping the price unless Xbox starts selling like mad. If Xbox sales don\'t pick up, I doubt Sony will go down with the price... I wouldn\'t either.

Well, it really does look like they took advice from all those Bloomberg analysts and decided to bow to pressure.
They had to, it\'s simple. if they had studied the market closer when they released the X-Box, it could have had a
major impact in PS2 sales.. imho they screwed up. firstly with the high price point (yeah, i know PS2 was around £299
on release over here, but they are aiming to compete with the PS2 today. so, they needed a competitive price.)
Secondly, i feel that the biggest dent to MS were those word of mouth comments about the \'disk scratching\' issue
that were being discussed and had been proven. MS went on record to deny such accusations and initially said
that the purchasers were to blame for this issue. they must have made a lot of people angry with this
\'pass the buck\' type tactic. it made people see microsofts poor aftersales service. only after this was made public by
the press, Microsoft felt the pressure and decided to fix these faulty machines. now, we know that this issue was big
in japan, so why now does this issue come up with some european machines aswell? MS should have had this
licked by now. word of mouth is quite a hard thing to battle against. and all MS is doing, is creating more bad press.

This goes some way to re-placing the balance and in the end benefits us more.. but... at what cost?
Will this make things like MS tech support or repair services worse? surely, they have to minimize cost..

Well, i\'ll give them the benefit of the doubt, but there are still loads of things to discuss..

With sonys massive euro/usa/jap installed userbase, maybee microsofts aim should be to put the X-Box into peoples
homes alongside their PS2\'s.. i dunno. a bold statement, yes, but lifes full of what ifs and buts isn\'t it..
Maybee then, people will have an educated decision on what machine or band that they will go with.
 
Carry on...

I really can\'t see Xbox keeping up with PS2, Xbox has the most potential but never used it, well it was never given a chance but hey, it\'s good to see Billy boy fall on his ass.

go xbox go xbox.

i can only see microsofts move to cut x-box prices as beneficiary to us the consumers and also in the long run to microsoft its self ,as the lowered prices might encourage more people to purchase the xbox.