Sony Reveals Australian PS2 Price Drop

Sony has confirmed that it will drop the price of the PlayStation 2 console in Australia from AUD249.95 ($190) to AUD199.95 ($152) on June 1st, in an interesting move which was heralded by price drops elsewhere in the world last month. Though the Australian reduction is apparently an attempt to compete with publicity for Nintendo's DS Lite, which now launches on the same day for the same price, U.S. analysts had been predicting a North America PS2 price drop for some time prior to the price drop to $129 in April. At that time, Sony commented that it "expects this latest price move to fuel consumer demand even further" for its current-gen device - the console sold almost 275,000 units in North America in March, ahead of all other game hardware, including the Xbox 360, which was continuing to suffer hardware shortages at the time. Sony also updated on statistics at the time of the U.S. price drop, revealing that more than 101 million PlayStation 2 units and approximately one billion pieces of software for the PlayStation 2 have shipped worldwide, and that the PlayStation 2 has a 55.6 percent hardware units share in the U.S., more than double of any other console. Though it is unlikely that the U.S. price will drop any further, there is now speculation that a UK/European price drop may now occur in the near future, since the console has not been reduced in price there since August 2004, when it went down to UKP104.99 ($197) - however, there has been no official statement to that fact from Sony.