Sony slashes PS2 price, Xbox makes pre-emptive strike
PS2 and Xbox are set for European price cuts in the coming days, with Sony to drop its console to £104.99 this week and Microsoft announcing a £99.99 price for Xbox this afternoon.
PlayStation 2 and Xbox are set for European price cuts in the coming days, with Sony to cut its price to £104.99 effective immediately. Microsoft announced a pre-emptive drop in the price of Xbox to £99.99 price this afternoon.
Although announced first, in a move designed to spoil the effect of Sony's cut to some extent, the Microsoft price drop will not take effect across Europe until August 27th.
The announcement of Microsoft's price drop was made this afternoon at 3pm CET (2pm GMT) at the Leipzig games Convention. Sony's announcement was made at 4.30pm CET from the same event.
Retailers will hope to see a significant sales boost for both consoles from the price cuts, much as was experienced by US retail back in June when Microsoft, and then Sony, slashed the price of their consoles within the space of a month of each other.
In the UK, the PS2 has continued to outsell the Xbox by a factor of between 2:1 and 2.8:1 over the course of the summer, with the Xbox shifting around 5,000 units per week while the PS2 hovered between 8,000 and 14,000 units.
Update 14:18 - Microsoft confirms price drop.
Update 15:33 - Sony confirms price drop.