Highly placed sources have has announced that Xbox 360 is set to launch in Europe on November 25th, with the US launch preceding a few days earlier -and the price tag may be as high as UKP 299.
While they were confident of the dates being mooted, the price of the system remains less certain - with our sources indicating that Microsoft itself may not have made up its mind on the matter as yet.
"The original plan was UKP 249, but now that Sony is talking about the PS3 being expensive, UKP 299 is looking more likely," according to one source - although it was admitted that this pricing is a "best guess" based on information from Microsoft, not an official figure by any means.
Even allowing for the higher tax rates here in Europe, a UKP 299 price point would translate as around $500 in the US, which is significantly higher than is currently anticipated by most market watchers - among whom the general consensus is that the system will launch at $300, suggesting a UK price point of under UKP 200. One area of pricing which our independent sources were more certain of was the pricing of software, with Xbox 360 titles likely to hit shelves at around UKP 44.99 - a price premium over current generation software which Microsoft is said to be unhappy with, but which has been driven by demands from third party publishers.
News source: gamesindustry.biz'
