CATCH ON YOU DAMN FANBOYS!!!!!!!!11

aNiMeMaN14

thats a pretty cheap pro for 274 but omg 550 for a elite? wtf?

maraxusofk

Sorry to double post, but another thought is this combined with the recent surge in sales might pull Microsoft out of the "Nobody in Japan buys the 360" gutter. They'll never be the #1 system, but at this price, people contemplating a PS3 or wanting to get something that's more of a powerhouse than a Wii will not have much hesitation. Also considering they've got a large back catalog of games already released, this price point makes the deal too sweet.

GoKeithGo

After the September price drop in the US and Canada, I think the Xbox 360 Arcade will officially be cheaper than the Wii in all territories! Congrats Microsoft (I guess)!

jonaswan2

Wow. That ¥19,800 price is really tempting. That will almost make it an impulse item. I'm contemplating buying one myself now. Aah, a great way to spend a student loan.

GoKeithGo

Because our price cut comes NEXT week..? :)

Justin42

@d3ath_fly: Because the 360 isn't having trouble selling in the US?

Seriously though, this is some rather aggressive marketing. Looks like MS wants that market segment badly.

Re1gn

@d3ath_fly:

Because some people in America actually care about Microsoft.

RaptureScientist

Uh, why can't this be in the US too?

d3ath_fly

So what does the Japanese Elite model come with for such a huge price jump?

Pornosaur

@d3ath_fly:

Aren't they slashing the price in the US too? I mean a 199 Arcade sure sounds like a pretty big slash to me.

LittleBigPlaneteer

@gabelogan: They have to show profits every so often in order to please the shareholders and let them keep making the system. This will bring them fairly close, especially with the arcade, to their estimated production cost, but still a tiny bit of profit.

Plus looking at the sales numbers, arguably for Sony as well, shows that they're hitting about all the consumers they're going to at this current price point, so there's no point to sit on it anymore.

Nirolak

wow sounds like they could get a little bit of the market and actually have a pretty fair chance next generation. Might be a bit off base but am i the only one angry that they've taken so long to cut it down its obviously pretty cheap to make if they can drop it so low but why did they wait so long? (i take that back if they make for a loss like sony, i just figured they were just trying to milk money from the hardware as long as they could?

gabelogan

@GoKeithGo: They still have to pull themselves out of the 'no one knows what a 360 is' gutter though. And hey, this is MS Japan we're talking about; I fully expect them to fuck up by releasing a volley of ads that make absolutely no sense and go over the head of almost all average users.

This did make one of the pages of major newspapers like Asahi Shinbun, though ( [www.odnir.com] ), so it'll be interesting to see if that'll have any effect.

muu

The hell you talking about? Right now an Elite costs 48,000 yen, not 68,000. That would make it 40,000 yen after the price drop.

Jesse in Japan

Hm, sell out then cut your prices? Something is a fish here.

You Are My Friend!

@BobDelli:

Did you even read the article? There's no price cut yet.

dead_red_eyes

Hmm...the laws of supply and demand being what they are, MAYBE they should have restocked before they cut the price? Maybe?

BobDelli

@muu: Haha, You're right about that, but they've got enough retail presence in Japan to catch a few eyes of window shoppers and a price point low enough to catch a few wallets. The mid-level game audience, as those between hardcore gamers and casual will increase. This COULD be their ticket out of the "What's a 360?" Ghetto.

For Microsoft's sake, I'm hoping by now SOMEBODY figured out how to market the thing. The marketing here is just abysmal.

GoKeithGo

does the japan price impact the rest of asia? Singapore for example.

Rockzilla

@You Are My Friend!: Yeah, it is weird to slash prices after the system is supposedly "sold out." But then again, I'll attribute this to a timing issue of Microsoft cutting prices in other territories and then having Japan naturally follow suit.

Tenchuu

This is certainly not good news for sony and I'm not sure if they expected something like this...maybe they did, but this is really a big price slash.

GodKiller0

next few months will be interesting for the big 3

Alchemy_Comrade

Nice for the Japanese, but I'm not sure it'll help MS THAT much, as I don't think it was the price point that stopped the Japanese from buying a 360, more a general apathy towards the brand.

Combichristoffersen

What's the point of cutting prices when you are short on suply. It doesn't make any sense. I know what they are trying to go for here...create a really big sense of shortage. We were short by 50,000...and now we're 75,000 short...yeah...we're really short on xbox360.

karateka

@GodKiller0: Sony's issue in Japan is its own price...and the Wii...a cheaper X is not going to make a dent.

AFAIK the cheaper price in the EU still hasn't put the X ahead in week to week sales vs the Wii or the PS3 and it will do even less for it in Japan imo.

KSPRAYDAD

I hope this would trigger a PS3 price cut. But IMO, it won't generate that much of a surge if there is no marketing blitz to promote it.

AokiShinya

Hmm, with Infinite Undiscovery on the horizon in combination with this announcment, is it possible that the recent sales surge will continue? *gasp*

Chinpokomon

The reason they did this is because they need to sell more systems asap or lose all their exclusive jrpgs. Namco is a prime example since microsoft is paying for all developing costs in exchane for exclusivity but namco cant keep it up since profits are wayyyyyy down. Namco realizes at this point if they sold any of their games on the ps3 they would make more money even if they had to pay for development. I think they were disappointed with sales from there horrible gundam game and made an agreement with microsoft but i doubt they can keep it up.

97gsx

GTA comes out in another month or something (I forget, there was a Kotaku article on it even), which is going to move some more units- GTA still doesn't do awesomely well in Japan, probably because the Japanese can't wrap their heads around a game that offers a good amount of freedom (what? nobody holding your hand and telling you what to do all the time?). I was looking at 360s last week to see if anywhere was jumping the gun (nope), but them cutting the price in the middle of a shortage is just going to make Japanese people irate. MS is being a big cocktease, nobody likes cockteasers. I wonder if the MS building in Daitabashi has a store...

denki

@GoKeithGo: Ironically, the only reason I bought my original xbox in Japan was that it was the same price as a DVD player (13000 yen at the time) and came with the DVD Kit, an extra controller, halo 1 and project gotham racing.

The downside was that even after buying all the games I wanted for the system (that were available in Japan) I still have only 10 games for the system.

ハリセンボン

I hope they know what they're doing. I mean, there's a fine balance between brand and price, you know; slash prices too much and I'm gonna mistake it for a cheap Chinese knockoff.

Gunhaver

Ps3 price cut? not any time soon

Ice-9

Its weird, the last time I saw a huge price drop in a console in that same amount of time was just before SEGA decided to stop supporting the Dreamcast, I paid mine 100$.
I will wait a couple of month, maybe the 360 will go down at the same price, and maybe then the console will be reliable. At that price I dont know if you need something else to play the recent games, memory card, hard drive etc.

I wonder if SONY will follow the same trend to cut the PS3 price.

Veltis

This makes me believe that there were not suppply constraints in Japan as was recently reported. Either that or MS is trying a last ditch effort to get a substantial user base the region.

SAKY

Dammit, must fight urge to buy another Xbox 360. But I do need HDMI... NOO!!!

drifter13

I do hope that this price drop starts a upward trend of 360 sales in Japan.

Otherwise, I'm not sure what else Microsoft can do...

Reikson

now just imagine if a monster hunter or dragon quest game got announced for the 360? that would put a serious hurting on any chance PS3 has in Japan.

DontTouchMyDaughterYouFilthyGaijin

um dreamcast.

zkotaku

Well I do agree the massive price changes is a really aggressive move to the market, but how could you resist that price? Unlike the Xbox, there's actually a few games on my list I'm looking forward to playing on the Xbox 360 if I were to buy it.

NanatsuYoru

@muu: Wait? That's a newspaper? I don't care if it was in English, I still wouldn't be able to figure out which title went with which article.

Quicksilver4648

Doesn't make sense. Normally you hold or rise the price when demand is high. Is the demand really high!?

Garo

@BobDelli: But then they can't draw up hype for it being out of stock and there being a "limited" supply. Price drop before restocking can draw up hype and almost create an almost panic situation to find one.

Aesteval

Next time,with each Gears of War 2 purchased in Japan they will be giving a free 360!!!:p

badmoogle

@karateka: @Garo: They want to keep the demand up after the resupply. It's a smart move.

Captain Impulse

Wow, look at all the marketing majors here! :/

What the hell are you guys drawing your conclusions from?

iNime

Hmmm, the 360 is not a crap machine, in fact aside from Blu-Ray it matches the PS3 tit for tat.

Let people buy what they want - its the games that matter!

shaunomacx

I just can't wrap my head around the 360 being cheaper than the Wii in Japan. In addition, 360's sold out because of one game!? What's next, Japan becoming landlocked with Asia?! o.O

Furysetzer

Smart move, but you all know they'll give the US consoles a price cut soon.

Shockadin

@DontTouchMyDaughterYouFilthyGaijin: I think being portable also plays into it as well.

okenny :) ...building bridges (to hide under)

Don't need a second one...but want HDMI...argh...so tempting...

peteer02

@karateka:
I would imagine that seeing as this price drop is not instantaneous, they should be able to meet the bulk of the new demand for it...

Akin

Is this Microsoft finally admitting that they *are* in competition with the Wii?

phisheep