In a bid to undercut Nintendo’s Wii in Japan, Microsoft plans to slash the price of the Xbox 360 by almost 30%.

Japanese demand has been low for Microsoft’s console, but after a recent surge, thanks to Bandai-Namco’s ‘Tales of Vesperia,’ things are looking up for the American company.  To further rally Japan behind the Xbox 360, Nikkei business daily reports that Microsoft will drop the Arcade model’s price to 19,800 yen ($180).  This follows a previous 20% price cut from 34,800 yen to 27,800 yen earlier this year.

The Xbox 360 will now be the cheapest contemporary console on the market, with the Nintendo Wii in close second at 25,000 yen, and Sony’s PlayStation 3 in a distant third at 39,800 yen.

Although the hard-drive’less Arcade is the only model reported to recieve a price cut, we expect the other models to fall in line, along with announcements for world-wide price cuts.

Source: Reuters

Tags: Japan, Price-cut, videogaming news, Xbox 360

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1 Comment » TheWhaler on September 2, 2008 9:21 pm With the price cut, I know the core system and hardrive are sold separately did the price of the hard rive go down to? RSS feed for comments on this post. Comment Now Note: Commenting on Ripten does not currently require registration, however to be eligible for contests on the site, you must be a registered user. Name (required) Mail (will not be published) (required) Website Commenting Rules: No hate speech allowed. If you must argue, please debate intelligently. Comments containing selected keywords or outbound links will be put into moderation to help prevent spam. Ripten reserves the right to delete comments and ban anyone who doesn't follow the rules. Thanks. Notify me of followup comments Tired of the Goomba? Upload your own custom comment avatar.