Blackfriars' Marketing

Monday, December 05, 2005

XBox 360 premium package to launch in Japan for $314

According to today's Wall Street Journal, the XBox 360 with the hard drive (I presume this is the same package as the Premium version here in the US), will sell for 37,900 yen. Using current conversion rates, that translates to $313.66 versus the US list price of $399 (not that you can actually buy any at that price this Christmas season). Now that's not of much use to US gamers (do you really want all your menus in Japanese?), but the pricing discount over US prices clearly indicates that Microsoft wants to attack Sony on its home turf.

The article does not note how many units will be available at launch in Japan. Blackfriars estimates that availability will be slightly better in Japan than here; we're expecting Microsoft to launch with about 250,000 units there. Also, given somewhat lower levels of interest shown in Tokyo when XBox 360s have been shown (thanks for the photos, Gizmodo), we expect demand to be somewhat lower than the frenzied US levels as well.


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