Microsoft Officially Drops Price of Premium Xbox 360, Adds 60GB Model

In a case of “we all saw that coming,” Microsoft officially announced their plans to drop the price of their Premium ( or “Pro”) console to $299 and release a new 60GB version at the old 20GB’s price point. What we weren’t so sure about was their intention to discontinue the 20GB model altogether, so this price cut is really a clearance sale in disguise. The remaining SKUs were left unaltered.

Even though the Xbox 360 Elite is sticking to it’s original price of $449, Amazon.com is offering a seemingly limited-time discount, which brings the price down to $399, presumably to better fit with Microsoft’s other offerings. Hopefully this price will follow the Elite to other outlets as well.

It seems that with the growing sales of the PS3, Microsoft is looking for a way to increase adoption of its console in an already saturated market, as well as increase its ground with more casual gamers. With prices this low and many of the quality control problems stamped out, its hard to resist.

Redmond, Washington—Microsoft is giving consumers more gigabytes for their buck. The company today announced an Xbox 360® console with triple the storage space of the original console, but for the same price of $349 (U.S.) estimated retail price.

Available in retail stores in the U.S. and Canada starting in early August, the upgraded Xbox 360 will include a 60GB hard drive for storing the growing wealth of digital entertainment available for the console, including music, movies, television shows, and game content. In addition, Microsoft today dropped the price of its 20GB Xbox 360 console in the U.S. and Canada to just $299 (U.S.) (ERP) while supplies last, a savings of $50.