Console giants carve up Christmas prices

Retail Sony and Nintendo indulge in a round of festive undercutting.

Nintendo is expected to undercut Sony's latest price reductions asg. the console giants enter into the last round of the battle in the run-up to Christmas.

Last week, Sony cut prices worldwide on its Playstation console and peripherals, in preparation for a major sales and marketing blitz for its last Christmas of sales dominance.

Sony is looking to capitalise on what analysts believe will be the console's last big-selling period before it has to face the latest console on the block from Sega, the Dreamcast. The Playstation will fall #30 to #99 and the cost of peripherals will also be cut. The multi-tap and dual-shock controller will drop to #19.99 and memory cards and normal controllers to #9.99. Sony will also launch a #10 million marketing campaign for the festive period. The price drop will bring the Playstation into line with the Nintendo N64.

Sony has sold 37 million consoles worldwide and the price drop will no doubt entrench its installed base position further. Nintendo was understood to be considering a further drop to #79.99 in response.

Sega is on target with its Dreamcast launch preparations. It showed 'in progress' titles at ECTS last week and appointed Naohiko Hoshino as director of product development and third party licensing and Mark Maslowicz as licensing and acquisitions manager (PC Dealer, 6 May). The console will launch on 20 November in Japan and a year later in Europe and the US.

Analysts believe Sega needs to get the launch right following its disastrous figures for 31 March, which revealed a worldwide net loss of Y32.8 billion after it expected to make profits of Y2 billion.