Microsoft's (MSFT) Xbox team is making life harder and harder for Sony (SNE) and its PS3.
At a time Sony is resisting call after call to cut prices on the $400 PS3, Microsoft is effectively cutting prices on its own $400 top-of-the-line Xbox Elite unit by bundling in two free games with a purchase, starting May 1.
And they're not just any games, they're two of the most sought-after games out there, both of them exclusive to the Xbox: Halo 3, a "shooter" and 94 on Metacritic, and Fable 2, a RPG, 89 on Metacritic.
Combined, the two games retail for $100. (Both games are published by Microsoft itself.)
With the Xbox already trouncing the PS3 month after month in sales, with this new deal it becomes harder for Sony's own $400 unit to compete. If Sony really can't/won't lower PS3 prices, at the very least it needs to mimic Microsoft's deal, perhaps by bundling one or more of its own highly-rated Sony-published games like Killzone 2 and/or LittleBigPlanet with a PS3 purchase.
Sony was already losing the console war to Microsoft. Without some sort of response to the latest Microsoft offensive, the case for the PS3 to consumers gets weaker and weaker.
