PlayStation 3 Drops Price, How Will Xbox Respond?

As Sony’s goodwill tour concerning its PlayStation 3 console continues, a significant price drop for the machine–especially the 320 gig model–has gone largely unnoticed, or at least, it’s been strangely ignored by the gamer crowd. Perhaps only responding to negative stories is the idea.

Nevertheless, since correcting and/or the merciful end of the errors that plagued Sony during the Spring–console hacks, lawsuits that made a certain hacker infamous enough to land a job at Facebook, the downed PSN service debacle that almost resulted in an exodus of PS3 supporters–Sony has been working incredibly hard to improve the moral surrounding its next-gen console.

This includes an impressive “Welcome Back” package that allowed customers to download two free games from the now-restored PlayStation Network. Speaking of the word “inFAMOUS,” that was one of the games included in the free, “we’re sorry” booty.

The latest move by Sony is the aforementioned price drop, which takes $50 off the top of each version of the PS3 console. This means the 160 gigabyte model is now $249.00 and, more impressively, the 320 gigabyte model is now only $299.

Jack Tretton, the President and CEO of SCEA (Sony Computer Entertainment of America), posted about the adjustment over at the official PlayStation blog:

Today, I believe that value becomes even more evident. I’m excited to share with you that effective immediately at retailers throughout North America, the 160 GB PS3 and the 320GB PS3 are now available for $249 and $299, respectively. In addition, a limited edition inFAMOUS 2 bundle is now available at participating retailers across North America. The bundle retails for $299 and includes a 320 GB PlayStation 3, a copy of inFAMOUS 2 and a 30-day membership to PlayStation Plus.

It should be noted that Amazon has not yet adjusted their PS3 prices, at least for the 320 GB model. Maybe tomorrow? The 160 gig already has the updated price.

Naturally, Sony took to Twitter to spread the word, and while one of the announcement tweets were retweed over 100 times, reaction has been fairly muted on the national stage.

It should be noted that it is the promoted Twitter trend of the moment, so it’ll be interesting to see how well Twitter’s new advertising service is working.

That being said, the following tweet sums up my feelings, too:

While this may not be looked at as a big deal–even the official forums are fairly muted about it–the move is significant in relation to the ongoing Xbox 360/PS3 war. With the price drop move, you can now buy a console with many more capabilities than the 360, at least when it comes to home entertainment, and has a larger internal storage device than Xbox’s largest model–no, the special edition 320 gigabyte models don’t count–for exactly the same price.

70 gigabytes may not seem like a huge gap, but when people are storing movies and other forms of content besides games, and then you throw in the ever-growing size of the game saves themselves, and the difference is noticeable.

With that in mind, expect an Xbox 360 price drop any day now.