April 23, 2002. Copyright 2002. Graphic News. All rights reserved.

Video games price war

LONDON, April 23, Graphic News: The latest victim in the increasingly bloody video games price war is the man behind MicrosoftÕs X-Box, Seamus Blackley.

Blackley, a physicist by training, resigned from Microsoft on Monday. He worked at the video game arm of Hollywood movie studio DreamWorks before joining Microsoft as head of the companyÕs Advanced Technology Group. He has been one of the XboxÕs public faces from the start, even going so far as to propose to his fiance during the Xbox launch in New York last November.

The news comes as rival Nintendo announced a 20 percent price cut for its GameCube console ahead of its May 3 European launch, and just days after Microsoft admitted that sales of its Xbox were down by as much as 40 percent. Those sagging sales led to deep price cuts in Europe and Australia last week. Nintendo and Microsoft share the £14 billion (22.5 billion euros) video games market with Sony, which makes the popular PlayStation 2. 

Nintendo said GameCube will sell in Britain for £129 (199 euros in continental Europe). The GameCube consoles will now retail for less than both Xbox and PS2, although those two products also come with a built-in DVD drive. Last week, Microsoft cut the price of its Xbox consoles by £100 (163 euros) to £199 in Britain and 299 euros in Europe, in line with SonyÕs PlayStation 2. 

Nintendo will initially ship 500,000 units of GameCube to Europe, followed by another 500,000 units eight weeks after the launch. Pre-orders for the GameCube in the UK alone stand at more than 30,000 and are expected to reach more than 50,000 by launch.

The GameCube price cut raises expectations that Sony will also cut the price of its machine, with a possible announcement at the giant E3 games show in Los Angeles next month.

/ENDS

Sources: Wire agencies