Yes this is a reason to get excited, but you can't say you're surprised. Just last month Sony reduced the price on their respective system by as much as 17 percent, bringing the 80GB PS3 to a much more affordable $500, while the 60 GB PS3 was brought down to just $400. Microsoft couldn't just sit with their arms crossed and thus made a move of their own, cutting the Xbox 360's prices (as rumored actually) by as much as 13 percent, CnetNews.com reports. The premium model of Microsoft's next-gen machine will set gamers back $350 - minus 50 dollars the original price.

As the reporting site posts... "Faced with unexpectedly strong competition from Nintendo's cheaper Wii console, Microsoft is aiming at expanding the appeal of the Xbox 360 to an audience outside its core fan base of young men." Young men, huh...? Here's the Xbox 360's group product manager, Aaron Greenberg, explaining that "As we look to the holidays we want to bring in more gamers and lower the price for those customers."

The man goes on stating that "We're always trying to bring down cost of the box and...we always try to pass on the savings to our consumers. We feel like this is the right time to do it."

Earlier last month, Microsoft's Shane Kim was asked in an interview with 1UP.com, what exactly the mass-market price was and whether the Xbox 360 would achieve the mass-market price or not?

Shane Kim's words at the time: "If you look back in history -- again, it's not just going to follow what's in history -- in some cases, 75 to 80 percent of the business gets done $199 and below. So, we're not quite there yet. I think that number can change over time because of inflation, greater capabilities; what we can do what Xbox 360, even the core system, is far beyond what you could do before in previous generations. Who knows? Maybe $249 will be a mass-market price point -- but historically, $199 has been when you're talking a PlayStation 2-like install base. 80 percent of the business gets done at $199 and below. We're like the other guys, right?

We're trying to drive costs out of the system as much as possible so we can hit those price points. We're a little closer than Sony is with PlayStation 3, thankfully, but we're all trying to get that magic price point."

And here you have the first step towards that "magic price point." It'll be long before the Xbox 360 comes down to just $200, but yes Kim was right - they're much closer to achieving that than Sony is.