The funny thing is, that PS3 fanboys will claim that the price drop is obviously a response Microsoft had no choice but to make considering the new ps3 slim being only 250 quid and a far superior console (sorry I can't use the pound sign on this laptop the laptop is polish and the keyboard set to USA and bah) The people in the marketing industry come out with the idea of the fact they had to follow Sony down the road to compete but reality wise:

The Core and Pro models of the Xbox 360 were long since announced as discontinued, the Core featuring it's 20gb hdd was discontinued after the release of the Pro model and now the Pro model is going, though if I were Microsoft, personally I think I'd keep the Pro and the Elite and phase the Arcade out, the main reasons the Arcades sell where I work (in the biggest music store in the world!) is because people who experience the RROD or other failures (for example: one customer came in desperate to replace his 360 because his 3 year old daughter had decided to put toast in it's drive and close it leaving him with a 360 no longer of this earth) in this "disposable" society we seem to be living in despite the calls for recycling and change people even with a 3 - 5 year warranty on an item often cannot be bothered to simply put it in for repairs and would rather just shell 120 quid to replace it.

Ok so I went off on a bit of a tangent about my dislike for the continued sale of the Arcade over the Pro but hey, at 160 quid the Pro would have worked as a nice alternative to the Elite, some price concious families would like to have a console with a hard drive and therefore the option of saving games but cannot afford 200 - 250 quid for an Elite model. The fact of the matter is, that with the Pro discontinued the drop in price of the Elite was very much INEVITABLE anyway because you do not market consoles with a 200 quid price variation when a hard drive costs about 50 quid to buy. It's plain suicide frankly. Therefore although Microsoft has a long history of not being honest with it's consumers which unfortunately due to their stranglehold over the computer industry in general is pretty much everyone whether you use it at work or at home you're still using Microsoft. I honestly believe the price drop is not in response to the new PS3 slim. I do however think that Microsoft may have held off on announcing the amount the price drop was by until Sony announced how low they would be going with the Slim. I mean it'd be worse and very obvious if Microsoft had announced a price drop to 350 dollars and then Sony said "Well Bill, we're going to 299 beat that biatch" followed by Microsoft further cutting the price of the Elite, that would show they were concerned about the possibility of the new slim ps3 being a serious contender for the position of console selling king.


I discounted the Wii since I think that it falls in to a category of it's own I mean reality wise it's just a freaking game cube placed in a smaller, shinier, whiter shell with motion sensitive controls. Hardware wise, I don't think theres much change is there? Though, yes clearly this is still the fastest and best selling console in the world, the main battle however is now between Sony and Microsoft with the PS3 and the 360 duking it out. I love my 360 it's true and I have a healthy respect (and will be buying one soon as I can afford it) for the PS3.