Australian Xbox 360 Launch Date Set

Microsoft officials have announced that the Xbox 360 console will launch in Australia on March 2nd, 2006. The price of the console was given as AU$649.95 (US$476) for the Premium version, and AU$499.95 (US$366) for the hard drive-less Core system. Although the Xbox 360 has just started a near simultaneous worldwide launch, separated only by a few weeks, Australia is one of the largest single markets forced to wait until the new year. However, with stock severally limited worldwide – particularly in Europe, which Australia commonly mirrors in terms of release dates and its support for the PAL television format – it is unlikely that any other territory will have significant free stock until March next year anyway. "Based on launch and production capacity, we are hoping not to have any stock issues, but it is difficult to forecast demand," said David McLean, director Xbox Australia and New Zealand. Interestingly, although Australia will be one of the last countries to launch the Xbox 360 it is, proportionally, the most successful territory for Microsoft with a market share of 35 to 40 percent, which McLean is keen to extend to beyond 50 percent with the Xbox 360. The contents of the two system bundles appear to be identical to the original North American and European annoucements, with Microsoft Australia also announcing pricing for a variety of peripherals including the wireless controller at AU$79.95 (US$59), the 20Gb hard drive and wireless networking adaptor at AU$169.95 (US$124) each and the 64MB memory unit at AU$49.95 (US$37).