The E for All Expo website has relaunched to reveal EA will attend the show for a second year. Ticket prices are a little easier to swallow than last year, with an early bird special to the three-day event costing $45 for ages 14+ and $25 for kids 6-13 with registration by July 15. After that, tickets for all three days of the show will be $60 for adults who pre-register and $75 for general admission. (Pricing graphic can be found after the break.)

This year's show is already looking to be a bit different than last year, with Microsoft already committing to the event. We'll be sure to update if more major publishers acknowledge they'll attend the show being held Oct. 3-5 at the Los Angeles Convention Center.

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]

Ars Technica has a mole that's had a few hits in the past that's now whispering about something big . The mole says that Sony's console pricing for the holiday season will be the 80GB PlayStation 3 at $499.99 and a 40GB PlayStation 3 at $399.99. Yep, 40GB. We hope there's some other sort of pot sweetening here, otherwise, the only consumer for the 80GB SKU is the one who doesn't realize that you can hook whatever hard drive you want up to the system. The mole also claims that Spider-Man 3 on Blu-ray will be packed in with one or both of the consoles and that the PlayStation 2 will be dropping to $99.99.

The PS2 and PS3 price cuts would make sense going into a tough holiday fight. Even the 40GB rings true in the sense that it's PlayStation 3 plus baffling pricing, the Sony and Cher of the industry at the moment. With Tokyo Game Show just around the corner, we're hopeful we'll get some official word soon.

While the rampant price fixing in the video game industry can be annoying, at least you know that you'll usually pay the same price for new game hardware, software and accessories no matter where you shop. Not always though, as a quick glance at BestBuy.com show some Xbox 360 accessories being sold at inflated prices.

Best Buy's selection of Xbox 360 cables, controller-charging kits and the universal remote have all been marked up by $3 over the MSRP. Best Buy's price increase does not seem to apply to controllers, hard drives, memory units or the the wireless headset (oddly enough, the wired headset price has been increased). Other retailers continue to match or even beat Microsoft's set price on accessories -- Amazon has good deals on the Wi-Fi adapter and play-and-charge kit, while Circuit City goes below the MSRP on battery packs and faceplates.

Three dollars might not seem like much, but the increase is enough to make us reconsider Best Buy for our gaming needs. Here's hoping the extra money made off Halo 3-incensed dupes makes up for the loss of business.

[Via Gizmodo]

Used Video Game Pricing is a somewhat sporadically published blog that tracks game prices and follows how they change over time. Hey, at least someone is doing the work out there so we don't have to. They have an interesting article up detailing how the price of games released in the last two years tend to drop in price (not value ... you can pry Halo 2 from our cold, blistered fingers) by 60%.

Which is a bit of bad news for those of you waiting on price drops for all of the upcoming titles that will be blasting us until the end of the year. Who can wait eight months? Although if you manage to wait that long, you can pick up two for less than the price of one. Interestingly enough, games that were released more than two years ago only drop in price by 20%, meaning that your copy of Whacked! might still actually hold some value, both monetarily and sentimentally.

Good news: Just a week after the release of Guitar Hero II on the 360, a handful of songs from the original Guitar Hero have now become available as DLC on Xbox Live. Crappy news: You can pick up one of the three-song packs for the low, low price of ... $6.25! Hold on, we just choked on our picks.

In exchange for 500 points you can get one of the following three clusters, for just over $2 per song:

• Pack 1: "Bark at the Moon," "Hey You," "Ace of Spades"
• Pack 2: "Killer Queen," "Take it Off," "Frankenstein"
• Pack 3: "Higher Ground," "Infected," "Stellar"

Is that a fair price for songs that were released in 2005 and have already been played by a hojillion PS2 Guitar Hero fans? Or is that just the highest possible dollar figure that could be charged without causing people to involuntarily throw up on themselves? By this standard, the 48 songs of GH (selling for $40 new on PS2) would cost you just under $100 on Live. We'd make a joke that this a great way to repay people for selling them broken guitars, but we already know that it's Microsoft's hand on the insanity-dispensing Live pricing gun.

Our friendly anonymous source at Microsoft has provided us with a few more details concerning the 360 accessories announced back at E3.

Perhaps the most important involves the bundling of the Xbox Live Vision camera with a wired headset, the popular Live Arcade title UNO, and a month of Live Gold service for $39.99 when it releases in the States on September 19, 2006.

Granted, this is still an unofficial report (based on a leak of "official" info), so understand that you're probably not gonna get much confirmation from MS until they're good and ready to give it. If you'd like information on what other peripherals are coming out "Holiday 2006" (so sometime in the 4th quarter) and at what price, read on for more.

Next Generation brings us the lowdown from Howard Marks -- CEO of the newly-reopened Acclaim -- on Acclaim's MMO strategy. His plan is to bring Eastern games to the West with no subscriber fee, but instead to make money via in-game ads and micropayments.

Next Gen's feature asks if this will work in a market with no real precedent. By dropping the phrase "free game" and instead focusing on games as a service, Marks intends it to. However, his strategy doesn't come across with a lot of confidence in this article. It'll be interesting to see if Acclaim manage to set a good precedent for an East-to-West business model, and more importantly whether others follow suit.

Nintendo Wii will launch at $200 in an attempt to undercut the competition, says an analyst at Merrill Lynch. An executive from SEGA goes further, suggesting that Wii will launch for under $200. This latest estimate sits in the middle of previous ones, but taken in the context of past console releases a $200 launch price wouldn't be out of character for Nintendo. The NES, SNES, Nintendo 64 and GameCube all launched at a price point of $200, so we wouldn't be surprised if Nintendo throws up their hands and says "why mess with tradition?"

With the PS3's price confirmed, Nintendo's console is the last of the next-generation consoles to get a solid release price so it's natural that fans and analysts alike will continue the guessing game. As for the other type of price guessing game -- how much the Wii (PS3, Xbox 360) costs to make -- no-one has stepped up to the task just yet.

[Via /.]

Thanks to a reliable source from Microsoft, we've learned some important details about the new peripherals announced for the Xbox 360, including pricing and a few Halo faceplate (non)specifics. Check out the leaked info and prices below:

• 360 wireless gaming receiver (which enables wireless 360 controllers, headsets, and wheels on your PC): $20
• Wireless racing wheel: $130
• Wireless headset: $60
• Xbox Live Vision Camera (with headset, one month of Live Gold, and one arcade -- presumably Xbox Live Arcade -- game): $40
• New faceplates for Halo (with the Master Chief on 'em, but not Halo 3 specific) and Forza (no word on connections to the sequel): $20 each
• 256 MB portable memory unit (MU): no official price yet, but definitely not four times the cost of the older 64MB MU
  

Besides acknowledging that the PC is "the biggest gaming device of all," MS appears to be setting an agressive price for its most relevant new PC accessory, the wireless gaming receiver (at least in comparison to the outrageously priced 360 wireless networking adapter). Unfortunately, no price was revealed as of yet for the USB-based HD-DVD add-on.

We've speculated in our recent podcasts as to what would happen to the various 360 SKUs when price drops inevitably occur. An interesting theory bandied about by prolific Joystiq Contributor epobirs (on our earlier bump-to-256MB-MU post) was that a $20 price drop for the Core system, coupled with a $20 price drop on the 64MB MU, would finally allow folks to pick up a capable non-Premium bundle for the original $300 Core price point. (Not a bad way to undercut PS2 memory card prices, too.) We hope to get official confirmation on this info in the not-too-distant future.

[Update: Sorry, had the camera price wrong in the headline; it now matches the price of the bundle listed in the body of the text below.]

See also:

• 360's Mem Unit getting a bump to 256MB? (Comment from epobirs)
  
• Use 360 wireless peripherals with a PC
• Engadget & Joystiq's live coverage of Microsoft's Xbox 360 E3 event
• Joystiq / Engadget podcasts from Day One and Day Two of E3 2006
  

Retail store managers (Gamestop, Blockbuster, etc,) tend to get a bad rap at E3 due to their general lack of purpose and grating tendency to smugly report their exploits to folks on the other side of the counter back home. However, Hollywood Video Manager Chris, who dispenses late fee justice in Orange County, has added some real meaning to his show floor wandering by wearing a one-off t-shirt: Just Say No to the $599.99 and $499.99 PS3 price points. Rage against Sony's machine, Chris! Looks like the Microsoft partisans at GamerScoreBlog ran into the same dude.

With the recent slip-up by a Sony Europe VP regarding the PS3's European pricing, Americans have been exposed to one of the most annoying aspects of being a European gamer (when we're not waiting ages for games to arrive): unfair console and video game prices. Naturally a lot of American readers will be angry when they convert Mr. Fornay's €499 and €599 price range to dollars; $613 to $736 is a lot of dough when compared to the console's main competitor.

Fortunately for U.S. gamers (and unluckily for Europeans), no console manufacturer ever bases the price of its consoles on the currency exchange rates. The chances are that the US dollar figure of the PS3 will be equal to or lower than the euro numbers, not in line with the currency exchange rate. Don't believe us? Check out the Xbox 360's European pricing. For some reason the Xbox 360 price in U.S. dollars is identical to the price in euros -- working out to a €60 or €80 premium depending on which console you purchase.

Based on the example of the Xbox 360 it follows that if the European pricing outlined by Mr. Fornay is real, then the American pricing for the PS3 will be between $499 and $599 and not the crazy numbers that you get after converting the currency. Crappy for European gamers, we know, but at least the American PS3 Fanboys will stop crying!

The Revolution will cost less than the Xbox 360. That's Satoru Iwata's latest droplet of Revolution-based information, and it'll no doubt help fuel rumours of low-priced launches, although some launch speculation can now be safely laid to rest.

It makes sense for the Revolution to come in at a lower price point than the 360, although we don't know how much the 360 will be selling for once the Revolution is launched--here's hoping the games are cheaper, though.

[via Engadget]