Sony cuts PlayStation 3 price by $100 to boost sales

The world's largest maker of video game consoles, Sony Corp., has slashed the price of its popular Sony PlayStation gaming console in an effort to increase sales and compete with other popular systems.

According to Bloomberg.com, "The PlayStation 3 with an 80-gigabyte hard drive was cut to $499 from $599, effective immediately...A $399 model with 40 gigabytes of storage goes on sale Nov. 2, Jack Tretton, head of Tokyo-based Sony's U.S. video-game unit said in an interview."

The cut is Sony's attempt to compete with Nintendo's Wii and Microsoft's Xbox 360 gaming systems. Sales of the Wii system have more than doubled that of the PlayStation 3 since the two machines were released last November.

"Without this, it wasn't looking like there would be much action for PlayStation 3 this holiday," Billy Pidgeon, an analyst a research firm IDC in Framingham, Massachusetts said in an interview. "This is going to make retailers very happy."

The PlayStation 3 comes equipped with High Definition Multimedia Interface (HDMI) output to HDTVs, 802.11g wireless networking, USB 2.0 interfaces and a bunch of other capabilities.