Stateside Cube cut to $149.95
And now this just in, Commodore to reduce price of C64!
Oh why not just give them all away, eh? You're losing money hand over foot anyway, so why not just hand them out on street corners? And make the software free, too. Go on. Handbags at the ready, fellas, it's another price cut. That's got to be, what, (counts) eight of the blighters if you add them up cross-territory in the last few months! This time it's Nintendo who will take an axe to their retail price. The Cube will cost a piddly $149.95 from Tuesday, 21st May 2002 (tomorrow) across North America. Just in time for E3. Those of you who were at E3 last year (and I have met people who got so bleary-eyed and incapacitated that you could fool them into thinking they didn't go), will remember the E3 launch debate and the seesaw between rival press conferences. First of all Microsoft came out with a launch date, but only a few hours later Nintendo went one better. Then, not content with that, Microsoft responded in kind and beat Cube to the market by three days. I think it's safe to say that at $199 the Xbox shall stay, and the PS2 likewise, but many followers of the American market predict that the price war may be Microsoft, the richer of the three companies' trump card. If costs can be reduced by a reasonable amount, Xbox could be repositioned again. Overall it's far more likely that Nintendo's simple message, our console costs less than yours, will be thrown back in their faces further down the line, than it is that Microsoft will just sit and take it. Realistically though, the price debate is fairly unimportant at the moment. E3 this year will be a showcase of software to drive sales of either platform, because a console is nothing without games. Related Feature - The Empire Strikes Back