Microsoft today cut the Australian price of the Xbox 360 for the second time in less than six months, with the cheapest model now costing just $299. The aggressive action, obviously aimed at trying to woo console shoppers away from Nintendo's rampaging Wii this Christmas, will be backed by a $5 million marketing campaign.
The Xbox 360 Arcade now costs $299, a reduction of $50, while the Pro and Elite versions of the console have been cut by $100 to $399 and $549 respectively. In addition to the price cuts, Christmas shoppers also receive free games bundled with the Xbox 360 as announced last month. The Arcade currently comes with Sega Superstars Tennis as well as give Live Arcade games, while the Pro and Elite both come with Lego Indiana Jones and Kung Fu Panda.
The price cuts come on the eve of the dramatic revamp of the Xbox 360's interface, dubbed "the new Xbox experience", which users will be able to download next week. The new interface is easier-to-use and lets users create individual avatars of themselves and form online parties to chat with friends, share photos and play games together.
Jeremy Hinton, Xbox group product marketing manager for Australia and New Zealand, says Xbox 360 is now the cheapest next-generation console on the market and is host to the largest number of next-gen games. He says that while Wii has dominated sales charts this year, Microsoft has been happy with the Xbox 360's performance and is cutting the price to enable more people to enjoy the machine.
"We're very, very pleased with our sales this year so far," says Mr Hinton. "We knew in the first half of this year that we didn't necessarily have a lot of content, we didn't necessarily have the right message in terms of being able to take a response to market, so for us it's definitely been all about the best results in the second half.
"We're fairly consistently outselling PlayStation 3 in the second half. Wii has absolutely run away with the market, my hat's off to them. They're doing a fantastic job. But for us, console sales are important but also total spending on our platform is also important. Still 50 per cent of all third-party (game) sales are done on Xbox 360.
"The Xbox 360 customer buys a lot of games because we have a lot of games out there, and a lot of highly reviewed games as well. And things like our online service continue to go from strength-to-strength."
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