| RayRay102 said: What time frame should Microsoft counter with their own price drop and by how much? I am thinking the right and smart decision is to wait about one month and see how much of an impact the immenant PS3 price deduction will have. I think the perfect price cut in either early summer or late summer should be as follows if Microsoft were to make such a cut: elite: $299.99 with increased HD space of 200-250 GB. That way it matches the premium price of the PS3 while having the HD space to justify its premium price. pro: $229.99 with same specs. arcade: $169.00 with same specs. I think if Microsoft stick with my suggested price-cut, along with a couple of huge unanounced new AAA games along with a semi-megaton announement (they seems to have one at every E3 from GTA4 to FFVIII), then I don't see no reason why they shouldn't be able to maintain or increase their lead next year over Sony.
|
Your suggested price of the Pro & Arcade model will probably not be possible until MS merges the CPU & GPU onto a single chip (possibly leading to a slim model to reduce shipping costs). This probably won't happen until the end of 2009 but if MS is confident that the transition will occur smoothly and is willing to eat the short-term losses then MS might drop the price early to prevent the PS3 from gaining momentum. The $60 price difference between the Arcade and Pro is also reasonable since this would be close to the difference in profit (or loss) margins of these 2 SKUs (although I expect MS would want to make a bit more profit on each Pro SKU).
Increasing the size of the Elite's HDD would probably cost < $10/unit and is potentially a good selliing poing against the PS3 (although people looking to buy this model will probably be comparing the PS3 vs the X360 and not the HDD sizes). Currently the Elite is a horrible value unless you really need the extra HDD space immediately or you really value the colour of the console. So I agree it needs the largest price drop and some extra value.
Personally I think that MS will only drop the price after Sony makes a move but they will probably wait until October 2009. If Sony doesn't drop its price next year (which is extremely unlikely) then MS might wait until after the transition to an integrated CPU/GPU (so around Spring 2010). Also they may not make cuts quite as deep (i.e. $179/$249$/$299).
