Console price cut rumours surface

THIS WEEK'S console news is dominated by last week's price-cut rumours and stories of games companies in the red.

Before we examine the plight of Sony and Microsoft, be sure to check out some shots that are a little closer to our beloved PCs - Far Cry 2 screen shots to be precise.

PS3/PSP
First up is Sony, which said on Thursday that Q1 income skyrocketed despite PlayStation 3 costs, as the games division posted an expected loss.

For the quarter that ended on June 30th, sales in the games segment shot up 60.5 percent to $1.6 billion primarily due to sales from Playstation 3, but Sony couldn't capitalise and turn a profit within the company's game division.

But don't worry European gamers - you won't hurt Sony's bottom line any further, as SCEE has said it won't 'annoy' Europeans with a pesky price-cut. Thanks for thinking of us guys.

Sony president Ryoji Chubachi reiterated these sentiments by saying that the firm has no intentions of cutting the price of the PlayStation 3 in Asia or Europe.

Oddly, sales of the PS3 were up 135% since the July 9th announcement of the $499 price tag. Presumably SCEE doesn't want to offend Europeans by selling more consoles.

At least things are hotting up for the company's PSP. Wired managed to bag a new slim PSP and has a full review at the Wired site. On first glance it's difficult to see the differences.

One PSP which definitely stands out compared to the original, is this God of War modded Playstation Portable - and 15% of the final sale goes to Child's Play.

Maybe that could be re-engineered to have PSP force feedback...

Sony has filed an application with the US Patent Office for a device that appears to connect a wireless PS3 Sixaxis controller to the bottom of a PSP. No-one's quite sure what this is all about, but we suspect it's to help with PS2 and PS1 compatibility with dual-shock games.

Both the PS3 and PSP received firmware upgrades this week, the PS3 receiving 1.90 and the PSP 3.52.

Whilst 3.52 was a minor 'security' upgrade, 1.90 offers custom photo wallpapers for the XMB, messaging emoticons, AVCHD video playback direct from Memory Stick or camcorder, DMB sorting of hard drive-based games, upscaled CD audio over HDMI or digital optical outs, and a new forced 1080p24 HDMI output for Blu-ray films. Oh and remote eject for the lazy people out there.

Xbox 360
Similarly to Sony, Microsoft was discussing financial loss du to the recent $1 billion charge taken by MS because of Xbox 360 malfunctions.

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer addressed the topic directly: "We have to learn from our mistakes. It was painful to announce the write-off that we had to announce, and yet we knew we had to take care of our customers," he said. He promised that Microsoft will be "world-class when we do hardware."

Gizmodo also pointed out that 360 sales were down 61%. Instead of shipping 1.8 million Xbox 360s as Microsoft did in the fourth quarter of 2006, they shipped 700,000, which is a dramatic fall-off this early into a console's life cycle. The site blames consumer trust in the hardware.

Despite these losses, strong rumours of a Xbox 360 price-cut have gathered pace.

On the Xbox-scene.com forums, a user posted the following: "An internal source, who wants to remain anonymous for obvious reasons but already gave us correct information in the past, contacted us to say we should expect a price drop for the Xbox 360 on August 8th."

While this kind of forum talk can be taken with a pinch of salt, other signs are more likely to ensure believability.

A post on CheapAssGamer allegedly shows an ad of a Wal-Mart flyer indicating an Xbox 360 with a $349 price tag.

Toys R' Us has also been caught with an advertisement stating $50 off, pictured by Gizmodo.

The Hollywood Reporter also reports that Microsoft will cut the price of the Xbox 360 by $50 in 'early August' giving some credence to the 8th. The Reporter says that a source believes the price cut is due, because August is traditionally one of the slowest times of the year for gamers.

Microsoft has also remained tight-lipped about the possibility of a European Xbox 360 HD-DVD player price cut following earlier news that the company had snipped 20 bucks off the asking price in the US, taking it to USD 179 - whilst giving 5 free HD-DVD titles away free.

In lighter news, Jasman Toys unveiled at Comic-Con a line of Halo laser tag toys based on the Covenant plasma rifle, pistol and energy sword, which should contain us while we wait for Halo 3.

Wii/DS
Unlike Sony and Microsoft, Nintendo is performing well. This week the company released first-quarter results for the 2007 fiscal year, along with updated, heightened forecasts for total sales by year end. Take note competitors.

Sales of the Nintendo Wii have now passed the 3 million mark in Japan, according to the latest figures from Media Create. In the week ending July 15, just under 110,000 Wii units were sold. DS sales have now reached 18 million, with 142,000 sold during the same week.

There was more success for Nintendo when you examine the software chart - every title in the top ten is published for either DS or Wii.

In other news, someone has successfully hacked a Gameboy to offer some drum machine fun. A bright yellow Gameboy, 1MB of flash memory, a serial interface, and a custom ROM is all that's needed to put out some beats.

After the Wii Zapper, comes the Wii Blaster. Measuring 18.11 x 5.51 x 1.57 inches and weighing just over 11 oz, it's available for $16.58 and you can fire it with one or two hands.

Joystiq, this week, decided to focus on the fallout of Nintendo's Wii Fit, which presents interesting reading.

Don't forget to check out the usual Wii Virtual Console round-up at Eurogamer. µ

See Also:
Xbox 360 is in the mire
PSP slim has UMD cache, no Euro PS3 price cut
Nintendo still rules the roost
Xbox 360 hits further production problems