What was just a rumor as recently as this morning has apparently already become reality -- the Canadian Toys R Us web site is showing $50 reductions in price for the Xbox 360 Pro (now $349.99) and Halo Edition - (now $399.99). An informant at a Canadian Toys R Us has also told us that the Xbox 360 Arcade has been reduced $20 (to $279.99) and the Elite has come down $50 (to $449.99 -- all prices are in Canadian dollars, eh?)

Ironically enough, FutureShop, where this morning's rumor first originated, has not lowered their web site prices as of press time. Perhaps they're waiting until Friday to unleash that Turok Elite bundle on an unsuspecting public?

Does this surprise move mean an American price drop is in the cards? Probably not -- much like the previous Microsoft Canada price drop, the adjustment seems designed to bring prices up North in line with the weakening American dollar.

Update: Apologies for the inadvertent act of bad foreign relations. No offense was meant, Canada. Are we still cool?

[Thanks Stephen]

Update 8:15 PM EST: Toys R Us Canada has apparently lowered their prices already.

Thanks to an anonymous tipster, we have early word on what might be an upcoming price drop for the Canadian Xbox 360. The above phonecam photo comes from a FutureShop Canada employee, who says he was "quite surprised" to find a $50 price drop for the Xbox 360 Pro Console advertised right on the front page of next week's advertising fliers. Our source also tells us that the inside of the flier trumpets a $50 price drop for the XBox 360 Elite (to $449), an offer which allegedly includes a free copy of Turok.

Both price drops should be effective Friday, if this rumor proves true, and while we have no way of confirming this information as of yet, we have no explicit reason to doubt it either. Regardless, if you're a Canadian looking to buy an Xbox 360, it couldn't hurt to wait a couple of days to see if you can save a bit of green, er, funny multicolored money.

Canada blessed the United States with The Kids in the Hall, and now Microsoft is returning the favor by giving Canada $100 off their Xbox 360s. Now, that's $100 CDN and not USD before all those near the border go running north for cheap prescription drugs, maple syrup, miniature pet caribous and Xboxen. The new prices are $399 for the Premium, $299 for Core and $499 for Elite. Canada will also receive the Halo 3 Xbox for $449. Oh, in case any Americans are thinking that the Canadians are getting a deal ... they aren't. The $349 Premium in the States would roughly convert to $365 CDN.

Heck, while we're at it, Mexico got a price drop too! You can now get the Premium in Mexico for $5,199 pesos. Which means our brothers and sisters to the south actually pay $479 dollars for what the US gets at $349. That's ridiculous and something Mexican gamers should seek amnesty for.

Having recently returned from the future with 4399 other people, Wedbush Morgan analyst Michael Pachter revealed that he believes a PS2 price cut may be possible this year and the PS3 will get another drop in early 2008. Last year's PS2 price cut wasn't exactly what many were hoping for, but continued strong sales of the PS2 show it didn't hurt. Now Pachter believes that the PS2 might finally hit the $99 mark this year, which if you've held out on getting a PS2 this long -- seriously, it's a really amazing system for $99.

As for the PS3, Pachter doesn't expect any further price cuts on the PS3 this year. He expects the next price drop to happen with the release of the delayed GTA IV and Metal Gear Solid 4 next year. We're still wondering if the 80GB will take the 60GB's spot once the clearance sale is over. We know that in a semantic argument that doesn't technically count as a price drop and is more of a "product shift," but we're very curious to know what happens after those 60GBs are gone?

A post on CheapAssGamer allegedly shows an ad of a "Wal-Mart" flyer -- although you really can't tell what it is -- indicating an Xbox 360 with a $349 price tag. The resolution in the image is complete garbage and it's very difficult to tell if this has anything to do with the supposed Aug. 8 price drop. An even larger and worse image can be found after the break. Although we are working to nail this date and the $50 reduction down, there really hasn't been a solid piece of evidence we've seen yet.

In another thread done by the same CAG poster who exposed the Circuit City PS3 price cut, the Xbox 360 price drop doesn't appear in either the Target or Circuit City flyers for that week. Best Buy's flyer will be uploaded Monday. Just keep picking up those grains of salt as the information flows in going toward that supposed Aug. 8 date.

Update: Apparently the CC and Target info is for the week ending Aug. 10, so the info for the Sunday following Aug. 8 is still up in the air.

GameDaily finished transcribing their interview with Nintendo's VP of marketing and corporate communications George Harrison. A quick tidbit from the interview released last week gave us the info that the Game Boy name is probably dead. The full interview sheds little new light on stuff like Nintendo's Perrin Kaplan saying Wii revisions aren't out of the question and whether or not Harrison, Kaplan and other executives are staying with the company following the move -- the answer to that is a big ol' no comment. Harrison did talk Sony and Microsoft though.

Harrison says in terms of the Sony price drop, "I don't think they had any choice." He then makes the error of saying that "it's pretty soon after launch to be dropping your price." That was a nice try by Harrison to pull a fast one and make us forget that Nintendo knows quite well how to drop console prices to save themselves. Case in point, the Gamecube dropped its price almost 60 days earlier into its life cycle than the PS3 did. Although he gets back on point saying Sony is continuing to confuse consumers with two versions of the PS3. We wonder why Sony can't just learn from their PSP Lite and simply replace the old with the new.

As for Microsoft, Harrison says they were so busy trying to rush the Xbox 360 to market and beat PlayStation, while "discounting" Nintendo, that it "set them up for the hardware problems that they're having now." He says Microsoft confessed because they couldn't hide the issue any longer, "It's a stunning admission; it's more than a billion dollars." Harrison says Microsoft didn't have a choice on their admission, it just became too much. So, Sony admitted they needed to drop the price, Microsoft admitted their RROD problems ... now, what does Nintendo have to confess?

And here we were worried Sony was going to officially cause us to have a good relationship with our neighborhood bartender and liquor store attendant if they kept this rollercoaster going. A piece of random chatting printed in the loose talk section of the last issue of Game Informer hinted that Sony might release or announce a 40GB version of the PS3 at a delicious $399 price. However, it was just speculation, nothing more. That piece of idle chat made a second pass as a rumor this week stating that once the "clearance sale" is over, Sony would announce the new model. We checked with Game Informer and they explained, "That was one of our pre-E3 rumors that we ran in the loose talk section of the last issue. It turns out that talk was not only loose, it was wrong."

But while we're clearly and emphatically speculating, if there ever is a "low-end" 40GB $399 system with all the specs of the 60GB model (minus the full backwards compatibility, but hopefully with the new rumored Sixaxis), who cares about that extra 20GB of hard drive space? David Reeves sure doesn't.

[Via PS3Fanboy]

The funniest part of the GameDaily.biz interview with Peter Moore is that he knows the Xbox is biting the big one in Japan, but he points out that Sony "crumbling" in Japan against the Wii is just more delicious. Moore says he planned for an uphill battle in Japan -- actually it's more like a flat-faced vertical mountain battle, having only sold 122, 565 Xbox 360s this year -- but he believes Sony never expected to fail in Japan like they have.

Moore points out that Sony keeps talking about this 10-year plan without ever explaining what that means. He says, "I'm not sure what their 10-year plan is ... It's like they just said, 'We have a 10-year plan' [and that's it]." Moore isn't talking 10-year plans but he expects the Xbox to live longer than the original's four years. He says Sony can have all the plans they like, but the key is getting to the "mass market with price points [that matter]," which Moore says Microsoft is a lot closer to being able to do. Yes, that certainly sounds like allusion to an incoming price drop.

We've spent the last hour on the phone calling up random Target stores around the continental United States to nail this story down. What we can say at this point is that certain Target stores do currently have the $499 price on the PS3 (Item# 207230001). Beyond confirmation at these stores, in one case we even have a copy of a person's receipt, dated today, for a PS3 at $499.99. We've even asked while going through the price check process if there is a pattern to the Target computers and why we would be getting different prices at different stores -- there was no adequate answer.

At this point we don't know if this indicates that the price drop may begin this week, or if somebody flipped a switch at the wrong time. We've received reports that certain Circuit City stores have also started selling the PS3 at the $499 price, before their alleged sale next week, but we currently can't confirm that. Even if Sony doesn't announce a PS3 price drop at next week's press conference, it looks like the retailers are moving ahead with one anyway.

[Thanks Nathan and Counter5th]

We're not calling Sony President Ryoji Chubachi a liar when he says there are no current plans to lower the PlayStation 3 price. It's only fair we don't, as we're still calling Sony's PS3 price drop a "rumor." A rumor that we're starting to get so much anecdotal information, off-the-record and anonymous sources that it feels like a garden-variety Red Ring of Death story -- and we all know how that one ends.

According to Bloomberg in an interview today Chubachi, in regards to the PS3 price cut, said, "We have no immediate plans of now." Then he deferred to Sony's PlayStation division. Bloomberg even goes on to report that a Tokyo-based analyst for Goldman Sachs said in a report dated yesterday that MS and Nintendo may announce price cuts as well. It's all gonna hit the fan in less than a week.

[Via GI.biz]

If the recently rumored $100 price cut for the PS3 turns out to be true, it will end the era of one of the most controversial pricing moves in the history of consumer electronics.

The writing was on the wall early on, with former SCE President Ken Kutaragi hinting way back in July 2005 that he hoped gamers would "work more hours to buy [a PS3]." When the price was officially announced at Sony's E3 2006 press conference the first wave of ridicule was practically immediate. Kutaragi's comment that the price was "too cheap" for what consumers were getting just stoked the fires, leading at least one Joystiq blogger to call the company "out of touch." Hey, $599 is pretty cheap if the thing is made of uranium.

Yet by launch time there were some signs that the high price wasn't really a deterrent. Despite some launch window reviews saying the system "just isn't worth it yet," the initial stock of PS3s sold out to mobs of fans who waited in the November cold to drop up to six Benjamins on a game console. Many of those who managed to get one of the limited initial allotment put them up on eBay, where some fetched ridiculously inflated prices. Maybe $600 was a bargain after all.

Sony president Ryoji Chubachi, in what's apparently a translated statement from Japanese daily Yomiui Shimbun, said the company "does not rule out the possibility of lowering the price" of the PS3. This statement could easily be followed by a "duh" from the audience, anything is a "possibility." It's not like companies don't drop console prices eventually, but typically the president of a company doesn't open up the door like that unless they mean it, in the relative fiscal year future -- there are stock holders to think of after all.

Now, does this mean a price drop across the globe? That would be nice, but if Chubachi was speaking with a Japanese newspaper, it could mean that the Japanese will receive another price drop. That would be the nation's second dip in the price drop pool after they already received a 20% cut before the PS3 even launched. At this point it would be nice to get a simple declarative statement on a price drop from Sony. In the words of Master Yoda, "Do, or do not. There is no 'possibility.'" Or something like that.

[Via NextGen]

The Financial Times is reporting that Sony is "reconsidering" its pricing strategy for the PS3. Sony President Ryoji Chubacchi said yesterday, "We are re-examining our [PS3] budgeting process in terms of pricing and volume. Sales assumptions change and the market is competitive. We are in the midst of revisiting our strategy for the PS3."

Chubachi believes that Sony hit their target of 6 million consoles sold at the end of March. Some outlets are reporting that the March numbers actually show the sales to be less than 4 million. There is certainly a shift occurring in the business strategy of the PS3, but at this point the plan isn't clear.

Sony let Joystiq know, "There are no plans to adjust the price of PS3 in North America at this moment in time. As a normal part of our business, SCEA carefully monitors market trends and needs on an ongoing basis, but we currently have no announcement regarding any price drop in our territory."

[Via EvilAvatar]

Were you planning on picking up a Sony PSP tomorrow from your local Gamestop or EB Games? Excellent. Were you planning on paying for it? Super excellent. As a reward for your unquestionable moral values, you'll be given a $30 discount on that purchase of "the past". You see, as of April 3, the PSP Core Pack is being marked down from $199.99 to $169.99.

Gamestop and EB Games have already received the promotional materials (as depicted above) and instructions (shown after the break) for the long overdue price drop and will no doubt have it ready to greet you within the next 24 hours. For those still wary of the giggling miasma of April Fool's still lingering in the air, rest assured that we've verified this information with Gamestop. Happy PSP... ing.

[Thanks, Adam]

An interview with Sony Computer Entertainment America chief Jack Tretton in the latest issue of Game Informer revealed some troubling news for consumers waiting for a lower-priced PlayStation 3. When asked point blank whether price drops for the PS3 will be "as soon or as drastic as they were for the PlayStation 2," Tretton responded with a curt, "No."

For reference, the PS2 was reduced from $299 to $199 in the United States on May 14, 2002, 565 days after the Oct. 20, 2000 release date. Using this data and Tretton's above answer, we can expect that the PS3 won't come down in price until at least June 4, 2008.

The reason for the shallower pricing curve? According to Tretton, the increased investment in R & D and hardware makes the system "a lot more difficult to cost reduce" than the PS2. "There's a heck of a lot more under the hood and it costs us more money to make it," Tretton told Game Informer. Despite this, Tretton doesn't seem to think the system's price will hurt its position in the marketplace. "I think the consumers that get their hands on a PlayStation 3 clearly see the value and not only want to buy one for $599, in some instances they're willing to pay ridiculous prices to buy one on eBay," Tretton said. (Oh really?)

Well, Joystiq readers are pretty big video game consumers, last time we checked. Do you think the PS3 can remain competitive at its current price until mid-2008? If you don't have the system yet, will you be willing to wait that long for a lower price? How much would you be willing to pay for Sony's power-packed system?