If you can see past the extremely odd prose style of this Ars Technica piece Friday by Ben Kuchera, there's actually some potentially very interesting news there: Microsoft may be ready to truly reach out to the mass market with its Xbox 360.

According to Kuchera, Microsoft may well be readying a new round of price cuts for the Xbox 360.

Now, writes Kuchera, courtesy of his source, "the mole," Microsoft is planning to roll out new pricing on the entire line of Xboxes. For a console with no hard drive, the price could be $199; for one with a 60GB hard drive, it could be $299; and the high-end model, known as the Elite, with a 160GB hard drive, could go for $399.

Microsoft did not immediately return a request for comment.

If the report is true, however, Microsoft could be making an important move. According to many industry observers, the magic price point in video game machines is $200. Go below that, the theory goes, and you potentially open up your machine to the truly mass market.

Right now, the lowest-priced of the next-generation consoles is Nintendo's Wii, which runs $249. Sony's PlayStation 3 can be had for $399 for a model with a 40GB hard drive, and this fall it plans to introduce an 80GB model for that same $399 price.

If the Ars Technica report is true, then, Microsoft could be the first to break the magic $200 barrier and such a move could go a very long way to helping the company reach its declared commitment to winning the console wars.

Posted at 03:24PM Aug 02, 2008 by Kevin P McAuliffe in Inform  |  Comments[1]