In a recent thread I made, a few posters, like mrstickball, said they felt MS could´ve been much more agressive with price cuts last year, and in doing so might have avoided  the idea some people may have that now, interest in the 360 may be waning and increasing for the PS3, perhaps using the surprising July NPD results as an indicator.

Of course, with the $199 price in September 7 (1 week from now, guys) the ball might swing back to MS in a big way...but regardless of that, do you think MS was being a bit too 'conservative'?....maybe they were more concerned with profits than with growing install base at the time?

IF 360 didn't have RRoD, a $100-$150 price cut on last fall (2007) would have made sense. A $250 core, $350 Elite and a $180 arcade would have killed the PS3. PS3 would probably be on life support/fumes and would have become a Sega Saturn. Unfortunately for Microsft, they had to take a $1,000,000,000 bath on the RRoD, so they image was tarnished AND they couldn't justify to shareholders such a move (though the resources were available)

Yes but the MS strategy for the last couple years has been to make the entertainment sector profitable and cutting the 360 price heavily last year would have ruined this. It's important to realize that units sold isn't the #1 priority right now.

I think the price cut is coming at just the right time, Microsoft tend to be at their strongest towards the end of the year (2006 gears of war, 2007 halo 3, bioshock ect)

So we have a september price cut and its just in time for Viva pinata 2 (I suspect there will be some Viva pinata 2 bundles and another game to compliment it, like a kiddies family bundle)

Then only a mere 2 months later we have 2 of the most anticipated games of the year (Gears of war 2, Left 4 Dead)

All in all i believe the price cut will result in yet another great xmas for microsoft

The RROD will have added $50-100 to the cost of each 360 sold. If it was not there, the price cut would have happened earlier or the last one would have been much larger...

No, I actually don't think they could've, or should've.

I think this rapid new price drop was in response to the market, that wasn't planned.

As as been said many times, its most likely the RROD expenses that have held them back from doing some major cost reductions more then anything. If they didn't have that expense the gaming landscape would be different. The wii would still be in first place but I definitely think that had they cut the cost of the 360 at the right time they could have far more effectively competed with the gaining ps3 momentum. However thats all speculation, we'll never really know how it would have turned out.

I dont think Microsoft is doing particularly bad, they just aren't doing as well as Sony. I don't think Microsoft wanted to have the biggest install base because of price alone. No one wants that, and high sales could only last so long based on that.

I don't think this price drop is doing to do very much either. Before I thought MS would see huge numbers, but I am starting to really doubt that now. They are definitely going to see a boost, but I still think they will be selling under 100,000 a week and will still be losing WW.

What Microsoft needed to do was buy more studios and create their own image. Trying to replace Sony as the sequel to the PS2 worked at first, but I think there lack of innovation is killing them now. Price cuts matter, but like people said last year about Sony, software is the most important thing and they have been seriously lacking all year long.

The end of the year will be big and I think the price cut coupled with the release list will bode well for MS... certainlly being at half the price of the PS3 again will help during the Christmas holiday. Maybe pack in a big name game to boost holiday numbers as well... maybe the vision camera should be added in with the arcade version and a game like Raving Rabbits? I would like them to make the Elite system a little bit more special... they should have special versions of Elites but you don't know what Elite you're getting or maybe each store has diffrent editions of an Elite and it needs to be awsome like a Gears of War verion and a Mass Effect version... With the game packed in or the sequal packed in.

@Jandre

Wait...you really expect the 360 to start selling under 100K a week?....with the system averaging 50K a week in Europe and 3K in Japan, I can´t imagine it´ll do less than 47K in NA with this price cut.