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With Sony widely expected to use next week’s GamesCom trade fair in Germany to finally confirm a long-awaited console price cut alongside the arrival of a new ‘Slim’ PlayStation 3, it is market rival Microsoft that’s presently hogging the limelight where price cut rumours are concerned.
Looking to pull the wolldecke out from under Sony in Cologne? Image: Kotaku.
More pointedly, a supposedly authentic Meijer catalogue page posted to videogame blog Kotaku has revealed that the price of Microsoft’s upper-tier 120GB Xbox 360 Elite is about to be reduced to $299 USD.
Other whispers suggest the Elite’s price is set for a drop as Microsoft looks to phase out the existing 20GB Pro (a.k.a Premium) console and better position the 120GB model in relation to the new gigabyte-intensive Games on Demand service unveiled this week on the Xbox Live Marketplace.
With the Pro removed from Microsoft’s product range, the Xbox hardware line would consist of the 120GB Elite and the basic Arcade model, which comes without a hard drive – a point that could perhaps see Microsoft addressing one its customer base’s biggest bugbears: expensive proprietary drives hamstrung by limited space.
Specifically, to fully enjoy the varied media content, digital game downloads and Netflix access offered through Microsoft’s online marketplace, Xbox 360 owners require significantly more data storage, which has led to calls for Microsoft to launch competitively priced 500GB and even 1TB drives.
Microsoft’s current 120GB drive retails for around $160 USD, which means it certainly can’t claim to be competitively priced, not least when a conventional 1TB hard disk drive can be purchased for around $100 USD in today’s market.
If the rumoured Elite price cut is genuine, it's likely Microsoft’s plan of attack in helping maintain the sizable pricing gap that exists between its Xbox 360 and the PlayStation 3 – regardless of any GamesCom announcement Sony may have up its sleeve.
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