Well I have been on councilling at a summer camp for the last month so I missed alot. However upon arriving at home and checking the charts I quickly realized that Nintendo had made very significant gains against the 360. This came as little suprise to me but the speed at which Nintendo caught up did catch me sort of off gaurd I was thinking more along the lines of November not this early.

 So it got me thinking. I myself am usually a loyal Nintendo fan. However this generation Nintendo left me with no choice. Since the Wii is so innovative it is only getting unique games, this leaves me missing out on the rest of the industries games. I origionally thought third parties would port from 360. But to my dismay I saw them porting junker versions from PS2 or rushing crap for launch. This month I ended up buying an X-Box 360 Elite to balance it out. Now I can enjoy the great games from Nintendo and dodge the junk third parties are dumping by buying their decent games on 360. Of course Halo3 was a factor.

So now that I have a 360 Elite (No games), I have come to realize Microsoft needs to step up its game to compete. While Sony is most definatly in last place and failing to do anything right (To early for a price cut), Microsoft isn't doing to much better.  Microsoft's sales are beginning to faulter and their approach to marketing the console going down hill. Take the Elite as the perfect example. When I saw the Elite announced I thought Hmmmm I might actually buy this. But ever since it launched I searched up and down for it. But I found out from my local FutureShop only two shipments were made between launch and August 1st. The shipments consisted of one or two units, So I tried Walmart and employee their had no clue Elite existed, a day later three came in stock. I searched high and low my local EBGames said they got a single shipment since the Elite launched of three units (I know the employee). In the end I heard Walmart had gotten three units in yesterday so I rushed to FutureShop in the morning and sure enough they had gotten a single unit in that I snapped up. But at only 50$ more then the Premium 360 the Elite could be a massive seller. 

See if Microsoft dropped the core unit altogether like Sony dropped their core unit. Instead replaced the core with the Premium and the Premium with the Elite (Rather then giving us a price cut) sales should increase. Mass produce the Elite it seems to be a fine piece of hardware (Overheats pretty fast) but still a fine piece of hardware. combined with the launch of Halo3 and the few other killer apps this fall Microsoft could increase their sales by a ton. Sure they may not beat Nintendo out globally but such a move might make it possible domestically (North America).

So I think if Elite went mainstream (Microsoft makes it availible) and the Premium took the place of the core combined with the HD-DVD price cut and the releases of Halo3 and a couple other good games the race at least here in North America could be tight. But is a price cut alone enough to make the race tight or is it alone going to make the 360 a lost cause?

 Because honestly fighting the Wii with the current hardware and pricing doesn't seem to be working. Instead of allowing Sony to close in and Nintendo to gain more ground could Microsoft tighten the race abit?

hmmm while i do see what your saying microsoft is trying to help its sells by the diverse games it trying to produce at the moment. At the moment microsoft is trying to get more sales in japan than anything for many reasons
1 getting more japan supporters means more likely that more developers will develop with ms.
2 its the second largest gaming market so its def a good shot to go for

By making games such as blue dragon and lost odyssey its very much increasing sales, you look at blue dragon bundle sales and you will see that because of this game it has greatly increased sales of xbox in japan and they are hoping with lost odyssey as well

Yes. a $100 price cut would make it competitive enough in the US/Europe to make it competitive do disallow a Wii-domination in all 3/3 areas.

dropping the core altogether and replacing it with the premium and elite taking over the core is a good move.
Most dev's are already pissed off trying to retrofit their games for the core. (oblivion and GTA4 )

 Exactly, the core is no longer usefull and I admire Microsoft's nobel stance where they are standing behind their product but the only people who bought Cores were those who couldn't find Premiums or those on low budgets. Now its great for Microsoft to try to maintain the support of their core unit.

But dropping it would do wonders for Microsoft. First dropping it would boost sales the cheaper Premium would sell far better and the Elite taking Premium 499 CDN price point in mass production would see sales sky rocket as well. Coupled with the releases of bit hits like Halo3 Microsoft could really step up its game.

 Then a label could be placed on every 360 game saying either compatable with Core or not. Like they did when Nintendo released GameBoy:Colour! This way developers wouldn't have to retrofit their games 24/7 to make sure they ran on the older Core unit!