Sony PlayStation 2, Microsoft Xbox Reduced to $199

by Alan Sheckter, SmartTV & Sound news editor

May 14, Sony announced that it was cutting the price of its PlayStation 2 game console by one-third, from $299 to $199. Microsoft followed the next day with a similar announcement about its Xbox console. The announcements came a week before this year’s Electronic Entertainment Expo in Los Angeles, the game industry’s biggest trade show.

Sony also cut the price of its original PlayStation One in half, from $99 to $49. The company said it would also drop prices for accessories and extra controllers. Sony dropped its PlayStation 2 wholesale price in Japan, but left its European price alone, after a price cut last year.

Microsoft also dropped its Canadian Xbox price from $459 to $299 and Japanese price from 34,800 yen to 24,800 yen.

Ninentendo’s GameCube, the third name in this game machine competition trio, dropped its price by $50 on May 20, to $149. GameCube does not offer DVD playback (the other two do), nor does it offer a large variety of games. Nintendo also announced it would begin selling a $35 network adapter this fall
for broadband Internet connections and a modem for dial-up connections, something its rivals already offer.

Sony said it has sold more than 30 million PlayStation 2 machines, giving a more than 10-to-1 advantage over Xbox.

In addition to the machines themselves, all three companies puport to make the bulk of their game-machine money from console games, which sell for up to $50 a piece.