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Pressure on Nintendo to cut Wii price?
Mike Bantick
Friday, 14 November 2008 07:09
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Can you feel that? As the festive gift giving time gets closer, the temperature rises in the battle for the consumer dollar. With price cuts to the Xbox 360 now a reality, and Sony standing firm and aloof over PS3 pricing, does the weight of competitive pricing now fall to Nintendo?So it is without question that large corporations are community minded enough to help out when it comes to the gift giving dilemma faced by many at this time of year. Microsoft announced yesterday that this altruistic company policy has resulted in across the board price cuts of the Xbox 360 gaming console.
As reported this week on iTWire , Microsoft dropped the Australian/New Zealand Xbox 360 range prices by as much as 20 percent, making the Xbox 360 Arcade model the cheapest next-gen hardware by around 25 percent over the next competitor the Nintendo Wii.
Meanwhile, over in the sunlight meadows of Sonyland, the PS3 remains comfortable in its pricing at AU$699. According to Michael Ephraim, managing director of Sony Computer Entertainment Australia, said during a recent interview with the Sydney Morning Herald , comparing the "hobbled" Au$299 Xbox 360 Arcade to the PlayStation 3 was like comparing apples and oranges.
"If people want a completely stripped down cheap video game machine and that's it, then the low-end Xbox fits that market and that's not the market we're in," Ephraim said.
In the SMH interview, Xbox marketing manager Jeremy Hinton responded in kind;"You can buy a Wii and an Xbox 360 for less than a PS3, or you can buy an Xbox 360 and a stand-alone Blu-ray player for less than a PS3."
While the top brass at Microsoft and Sony puff out their chests and beat each other with a marketing lexicon, what of the third player in the game, Nintendo?
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