By: Aseem Gaurav on August 17, 2011
To spur the demand and widen its appeal, Sony has slashed the price of its PlayStation 3 game console by $50 across North America, Europe and in Japan.
In North America, the PS3 console will now cost consumers $249 with 160-gigabyte hard drives and $299 with 320-gigabyte hard drives. In Europe also the consoles will now cost EUR249 and EUR299, respectively. In Japan, Sony reduced the PlayStation prices by Y5,000, bringing it to Y24,980 for the 160-gigabyte model and Y29,980 for the 320-gigabyte one.
The hefty price cuts by Sony come in wake of Nintendo slashing the price of 3DS handheld console, by around 40 per cent to 15,000 yen. Nintendo is also planning to go the Sony way in September to revive the sales of 3DS console, the world's first video game console with a 3-D screen that works without special glasses.
Till now Sony has sold over 50 million PS3 worldwide. This year its popular Playstation network suffered a series of attacks by hackers that compromised the personal data of millions of accounts.
The move is designed to make the device more attractive to consumers in the coming holiday season. The base model Xbox sells for $200 or $300 with Kinect and the Wii costs $150 and comes bundled with Mario Kart.
