Jacob Mazel

Update:

Sony has just announced that the PS2 will drop to $99.99 and the 99.99 Euros . The 136.3m PS2s shipped worldwide figure through December 2008 has also been confirmed . The new price can be found starting April 1 instead of April 5 as the pictures below suggested.

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After launching in late 2000, Sony's PS2 looks like it is finally about to dip below the $100 threshold in the United States. Images leaked on to the internet from retail computers suggest that the PS2 will drop to $99.99 on April 5. The date is the start of the first full week in Sony's new fiscal year, the start of NPD's tracking period for April, and the debut for the DSi which Sony will want to offset. At $130, the $30 price drop represents nearly a 25% price drop for the PS2 and may foreshadow a PS3 price cut later in the fiscal year ending March 2010.

Thanks to Master X at the Highdef Digest Forums for uploading these pictures. Apologies to Master X on the delay - we were in a hurry to break the story as our sources had provided similar information but nothing in the way of concrete visual evidence.

The PS2 price cut may signal that Sony plans to cut PS2 production soon. Sony has shipped 136.3m PS2s to retailers worldwide as of December 2008, but unit sales of PS2 to stores were flat in the three months ending December 2008 (2.52m) compared to the three months ending September 2008 (2.5m) according to Sony's investor's website .

With the price cut, Sony can probably sell 2 million PS2s in the USA to gamers in 2009, clearing out inventory in store houses and allowing the company to wind down production capacity for PS2 by focusing on developing videogame markets in Latin America, Eastern Europe, mainland Asia, and Africa.

Contact Vgchartz at jmazel@vgchartz.com