a planned cut after 3 years on the market much like the ps2 last generation.... why would it be anything else they are probably breaking even on the arcade and a small profit on the other two even the laptop hds are not 100 and 200 hundred dollars.

or at worst for them a small hit on the arcade and even on the pro and small profit on elite,

honestly i would like them to seperate the gameing devision from the horror that is the zune and that damn surfaces department so we could actualy see what profit losses andguess more acuartly and other things....

zune such a piece of garbage.... surfaces nice try but we can do that with flat pannels already... ooo you made it a sphere big deal

its cheaper than the wii everywhere,
its clear desperation.
but again didn't worked in europe didn't worked in japan
it will work in NA but not for long.

Yeah, whats the big deal with the price drops? It was announced here first anyway so don't know what everyone is up in the air about, it's a great move on Microsofts part as they're making profits on their system and if they can keep doing that while putting pressure on the other companies to lower their price to theirs it's a great plan. People really need to look at it in a business sense and not an Oh no our console is being outsold by about 50k a week to our closest competitor... business cares about making money first and competition second, and if they can get a leg up while improving both sales and putting pressure on competition that's the smartest plan.

Boldness is to sell your casual(viva piniata 2,banjo 3) and core game machine(Gears 2,Fable 2,etc) at a lower price then your competitors.

Desperation is to say LittleBigPlanet will be huge and that Nintendo has the best games lineup this Xmass. That`s what I think.

Ugh... Both of the people discussing have beards. To make things worse, with such facial features, Frank is better off without a beard!

Either way, given the "still tolerable" starting price of the X360, and the timing of the GameCube's $99 price drop, this reduction isn't completely outrageous like Sony, who should have "used up all its allowed substitutes" in a football match.

I'm not saying it's desperate, but huge pricedrops certainly aren't bold.  If Sony or Nintendo responded with their own pricedrops, is that bold?  It's more like the opposite, since they feel they need the pricecut to stay ahead of the PS3.

As for Nintendo having the best lineup this Xmass... well, in terms of sales, they do.  The large amount of games coming (third party included), coupled with the Wii's massive, rapidly growing userbase will make it hard for the 360 to outdo it in software.  Mario Kart & Wii Fit during the holidays alone can probably match many of the new games released.

Desperation. Boldness would have been if the price drop came before sony pwned them in July NPD sales with the fire sale.

Yeah, because they surely couldn't have been planning this well in advance. It's not like they haven't been banging on for at least a year now about wanting to have a $200 SKU or anything.

It's not desperate. It's not bold. It's just an overdue price cut.

MS wants more market share,from both Sony and Nintendo. In my opinion,they will do it,because the hardcore have plenty of games to play therefore the system is great for them at that price,while the casuals have,again,games to play this Xmass.

About Sony,they have the price dissadvantage and not really a strong Xmass lineup. They can`t lower the price because they are focusing on profitability. The 40 gb model being replaced with the 80 gb one with NO price cut proves it. MS lowerd the price of the 20 gb to make room for the 60 gb model because they WANTED to.

About Nintendo,I really don`t see how they are so successfull,the Wii hardware specifications are low,can never compare to even xbox 1,and the games -> Mario Galaxy is a little childish,you like it or you don`t,Smash Brothers is a remake of the gamecube one,Mario Kart can not compare to Grid,NFS,etc. They have so much succes so they don`t WANT to lower the price od the system,they make a good profit off every unit sold.

In conclusion,MS is not desperate,Nintendo is not desperate. Sony systems sell,so they are not desperate in my eyes. The fact that Sony will sell less system than they planned to is another topic. You can`t say that MS didn`t steal many customers from Sony with this price cut.

Yeah, they planned it.  They sure did. 

They launched the sixty gig at 350 only to drop the price fifty bucks for anyone who purchased it in the last six weeks.

Companies always do that huh?  Instead of listing the Pro at 300 until it sold out, and sent out the 60 gig pro at 300, let some poor fools buy the 60 gig at 350 so they could have waited six weeks to hear about a price drop.

Yep that was on purpose, MS screwing over customers.