La Xbox passe à 149 euros à compter du 27 août Communiqué de presse en anglais

XBOX ANNOUNCES NEW EUROPEAN ESTIMATED STREET PRICE - €149.99/£99.99

Even More Competitive Pricing Allows More European Gamers To Discover Why It’s Good To Play Together This Christmas

Xbox, the future generation video game system from Microsoft, today announced new European pricing at a press conference from the Leipzig Games Convention. Effective from Friday 27th August, Xbox will retail at an estimated street price of €149.99/£99.99.

“With this new pricing, even more European gamers, casual and otherwise, will be able to enjoy Xbox this Christmas,” said Eduardo Rosini, regional vice president for Xbox EMEA. “We have some fantastic games on the way – from Fable to Forza Motorsports, the debut of Electronic Arts’ games on Xbox Live, and of course the hottest game this Christmas on any platform, Halo 2. With the strongest Christmas games portfolio of any console, Xbox is now also the best value console on the market. It’s a winning combination for gamers this Christmas, and even more people in Europe will discover why it’s good to play together with Xbox.”

Xbox continues to go from strength to strength, with cumulative worldwide shipments of 15.5 million consoles since launch and a worldwide shipment goal of more than 20 million units by the end of June 2005. The groundbreaking Xbox Live service now has a membership surpassing the one million member mark and is expected to expand to an excess of 1.5 million members by the end of June 2005, representing 50%+ growth.

Xbox has a number of hot titles coming out this Christmas including such first party games as Halo 2, Forza Motorsports and Fable, and third party games such as Xbox exclusives Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic 2 from Activision, Outrun 2 from Sega, Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory from UbiSoft, and Doom 3 from Activision, not to mention the premiere of FIFA Football 2005 from Electronic Arts on Xbox Live.

About Xbox
Xbox (http://www.xbox.com/) is Microsoft’s future-generation video game system that delivers never before seen gameplay experiences. With more than three times the graphics performance of other game consoles, top-quality DVD playback, Dolby 5.1 surround sound to make games and movies come alive, and a hard disc that opens up new kinds of gameplay, Xbox is the video game system that delivers more of what gamers want. Xbox is available Friday, 27th August in Europe for an estimated street price of €149.99/£99.99.

About Microsoft
Founded in 1975, Microsoft (Nasdaq “MSFT”) is the world-wide leader in software, services and Internet technologies for personal and business computing. The company offers a wide range of products and services designed to empower people through great software - any time, any place and on any device.