Highly-placed sources in the U.K. games industry have told the respected Gamesindustry.biz that the Xbox 360 will launch in Europe on the 25th of November, with the U.S. launch a few days earlier.Microsoft are expected to make the official announcement at the German Games Convention in Leipzig on the 17th of this month.
The sources also say that Microsoft are not 100% certain on the price of the console at this stage, and recent comments by Ken Kutaragi that the rival PS3 will be "expensive" may sway the company to raise their price.
While no concrete price was mentioned by the sources, they said a whopping £299 Sterling (about €430, $530) was "looking more likely" after Sony's recent announcements:
"The original plan was UKP 249, but now that Sony is talking about the PS3 being expensive, UKP 299 is looking more likely," according to one source - although it was admitted that this pricing is a "best guess" based on information from Microsoft, not an official figure by any means.
Even allowing for the higher tax rates here in Europe, a UKP 299 price point would translate as around $500 in the US, which is significantly higher than is currently anticipated by most market watchers - among whom the general consensus is that the system will launch at $300, suggesting a UK price point of under UKP 200.
One area of pricing which our independent sources were more certain of was the pricing of software, with Xbox 360 titles likely to hit shelves at around UKP 44.99 - a price premium over current generation software which Microsoft is said to be unhappy with, but which has been driven by demands from third party publishers.
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