Xbox 360 Arcade Gets Price Drop, Now Below $200 Mark

Kris Erickson • Sep 2, 2008 • Comments (1)

Market researchers have worked some long hours trying to come up with a "sweet spot" for consumer electronics pricing. It turns out that video games consoles tend to really sell when priced in the magical sub-200-dollar range, perhaps because that is about the amount of money that we can realistically be expected to have burning a hole in our pockets when taking a trip down to the local electronics store.

Today, a leaked Walmart flyer spilled the beans on a momentous price drop from Microsoft. It looks as though the Xbox 360 Arcade (the one without a hard drive) will now be priced right in that mythical $199 sweet spot. Interestingly, Microsoft is the first hardware maker to achieve this low price during the current generation of consoles.

Will Sony and Nintendo be forced to make similar moves now that the Redmond giant has delivered such a tempting offer to mass-market consumers? Almost certainly. Will we be able to pick up a shiny new Playstation 3 for less than 200 dollars in the forseeable future? Highly unlikely, but we wouldn't be surprised to see a sub-200-dollar Wii in time for the holidays, that is if Nintendo can ever catch up with demand.