Rumours have been rife in the past few months about Microsoft releasing a Kinect-less Xbox One for $399 and in the latest episode of Bonus Round, Wedbush analyst Michael Pachter talked about how this will happen soon enough. The Kinect was apparently heavily favoured by Don Mattrick and now that he’s gone, it’s support isn’t what it used to be.

“Don isn’t there anymore. You have a new boss over the Xbox division, who has no skin in the Kinect game. Sure they’re gonna unbundle. Not in 2014. They will not change the SKU that dramatically in the first full year. It’s a 2015 event.

“Just the way they introduced the 4GB Xbox after a couple years, they’ll bring one out and it’ll be something that’ll look a little dumbed down. I think they’ll actually pick the core model and put a 2TB hard drive in it, and then the dumbed down one will have a 500GB hard drive, and it’ll have no Kinect, and it’ll be $400.

“The problem is that if by spring ’15 they cut the price to $400, Sony goes $349 for ours/Sony right now is in a position to stay ahead of them, and this is what happened with the PS2. PS2 kept taking share by cutting price. I think this is a price game. I think unbundling Kinect is the smartest way to get competitive right away.”

You can blame Mattrick for Kinect still being bundled though, as the executive thought “it was gonna change the world. He believed it a mechanism to cross sell Skype and to cross sell cable access and doing other things.” That changed when they just decided to build the same functions into SmartGlass, especially with the growing numbers of smartphones and tablets.

“I think the overlap of Xbox One households and smartphones and tablets households is probably a hundred percent. I think that Kinect has become almost irrelevant. I think the voice command is really cool, but you can use your tablet.”

“Also, the distinction between the portables and mobile is [blurring], because there are all kinds of hybrids, different form factors and operating systems can still be conceived, in terms of how we characterize portable and mobile. We still like PS Vita and we know people who buy it really like it.”

This was exemplified in the Vita’s Remote Play feature, which uses the power of the Cloud to play PS4 games on the device. Gamescom 2013 was also devoted the Vita, debuting exclusives, indie titles, a price drop and much, much more. Will the device see a turn-around? Time will tell.

The journey has been rough for the fledgling handheld, which has had to fight dwindling sales, a high price point, low selection of exclusive games and of course, competition from Nintendo’s 3DS which has been selling like gangbusters around the world. Nonetheless, a price drop should bring Sony one step closer to claiming the portable throne from Nintendo, or at least mounting a comeback.

The selection of games also looks like it will be improving as Gamescom 2013 saw the announcement of popular indie platformer Fez, Gearbox Software’s Borderlands 2 and Murasaki Baby for the PlayStation Vita, among other titles. Stay tuned for more updates, and we’ll see just how much fight the Vita has left in it over the next few months.

Sony has, as expected, dropped the Vita’s price in Japan. The handheld’s sales were struggling worldwide, and this is a reaction that should have happened earlier. The system came out in February 2012 and it has been exactly one year since the handheld came out.

Sony has announced new prices for the system during the Vita heaven in Japan. The basic model gets a 5000 yen price drop from 24,980 yen to 19,980 yen. The 3g model has also been dropped in price.

Hiroshi Kawano, the boss of PlayStation Japan, announced the price drop during a Vita heaven live stream. The stream is now over, and not many new games have been announced, however, Final Fantasy X HD has been shown, and Square’s executive apologised for the delay.

The 3DS costs 18,900 yen and now both the consoles are in the same price range as each other. No price cut for NA or Europe has been announced.

Tell us what you think in the comments section below.

Sony’s Playstation branded tablet named unimaginatively as, Tablet S seems a little unpopular, prompting in a price drop. The price drop is almost 20% or $100 off the base price, which means both the 16GB and 32GB versions cost $400 and $500 respectively.

The tablet runs on Android, and sports a Tegra 2 processor.

Earlier it received support for Dualshock controllers, which we covered here. Price drop is not a good sign, because it seems like the sales aren’t up to Sony’s expectations, although, this price drop may change the tablet’s fortunes.

You can find the official listing here.

Tell us what you think in the comments section below.

Pretty big achievement for Sony, as they have officially passed 22 million in Europe. Sony had a rocky start this gen with prices being more expensive than their US counterparts, it was always going to be a hard sell. But Europe proved that Sony can count on them, and it shows.

“PS2 across our territory went well over 50m units. We’re at 22m on PS3. So there’s lots of life in that still to come,” said Jim Ryan, SCEE head, to MCV.

“The new price for PS3 will make the console accessible to a broad range of new consumers”

“It was essential that we supported it with a heavyweight campaign. The announcement also kicks off a busy period with major campaigns for Resistance 3, DanceStar Party, PS Move, the new PSP and Uncharted 3,” said Alan Duncan, marketing manager, SCE.

Sony seems to be promoting the new price heavily, and it remains to be seen if it will have an effect.

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John Koller, director of Hardware Marketing, had a lot to say about the price drop to IGN. He revealed that Sony isn’t making any loss on $250 and they’ve been planning for the price drop for a long time. “It is still profitable, we’re not going into the red,” he revealed.

He said that they were planning for the price drop since a year, and it was required to boost sales.

“We knew the time was right from a market standpoint to drop the price to $249, it’s a really good time to make the announcement and we expect a lot of traction.”

“We’ve had this price drop in mind for over a year.”

He also hopes the price drop will get more Wii and Xbox 360 owners to buy the PS3.

“We’re opening our arms for the Xbox 360 and Wii owners to come over.” “There’s a real opportunity for those consumers to be able to play, what we view, are the best games in the industry on the PS3 this fall.

“There’s a significant number of Xbox 360 and Wii owners who would like that second console and want to have the opportunity to play these exclusive games and content experiences, and this new price point allows them to do that.”

The price cut was on the cards for a long time, and now at GamesCom it has been finally announced. Andrew House, head of SCE, officially announced the price drop of $50 for the Playstation 3. The UK price will be 192 pounds, as shown by the Amazon UK drop earlier.

The current prices are $250 for the US, 250 Euros for Europe and 25,000 Yen for Japan.

The price drop will be effective as of now, and the Indian price should be approximately Rs 16,000 now. What do you think of the price cut? Tell us in the comments section.

Amazon UK has dropped the PS3 price to 192 pounds, that’s a 25% price cut. Will Sony officially announce it at GamesCom? Everything will be revealed in a few hours. What do you think of the 199 pounds price? Please tell us in the comments section below.

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Just like Walmart, Amazon and GameStop (in UK), retailer Target has dropped the price of the 3DS today, as opposed to tomorrow, which is the official date of its price cut, says a report on Joystiq.

“There is a message board out to every store that the price changes are active today,” said an employee. “Price changes must be activated by corporate.”

Nintendo recently announced that they will be releasing a “Flame Red” 3DS in September.