Sure they would. They left the price for as long as they did because they could. They were selling well and had no reason to slash. Once a competitor slashed, they did the same... and came out very well from it.

MS was very aggressive with pricing for the original XBOX, if you recall.  

Its only like $250 for a 360 in Japan, when will they wake up and realise this is a great deal?

 when theres games they care about.

i though that japan didnt get the price cut that the u.s and eu got in the 1st place..so everyone should have known in was coming

I think they'll only cut price in the U.S. when the PS3 starts selling well (well as in sells more than the 360 in two consecutive months). But then again there was a rumored November price cut being talked about a few months ago so who knows.

 Actually, that is not quite true. There are some HDMI Premiums at least here in Finland although they don't usually advertise them specially.

there are HDMI premiums in the UK...

They are going to cut the price again awsome.

I don't think they're going to define their success by the performance of their competitors for a while.  MS' primary motivation right now is to prove it can profit from the Xbox 360 division for a single year, factoring out the cost of doing the 360 repairs.  This is their primary motivation for keeping price cuts at bay.

The 360 price cuts came much earlier than analysts originally thought it would (many predicted it would come at 20 million units sold, not 10 million units sold).  The fact is that the 360 was doing terrible in 2007 until August when it began to pick up in the US.  The price cut was obviously sorely needed when MS introduced it and I would anticipate MS won't bring another price cut about until the following two things happen:

(1) the 360s sales are low enough to warranty the *need* for a price drop

AND

(2) The 360 has a good chance at generating a profit on that year despite a price drop. 

The original Xbox was a different beast entirely because Microsoft wasn't trying to profit or prove anything -- they were going after marketshare and marketshare alone.  Plus, it looks like the original Xbox had significantly lower production costs two years after introduction.

I think they will cut North America and Europe again. I think that's why the August price cut was only $50 instead of $100.

And if you go back and find the original source that was cited and correct about how much and when the August price would happen, they also said there would be another cut before Christmas.