VIDEO GAMES Nintendo cuts price of console

The company has lost ground to Sony and Microsoft in North America.
LOS ANGELES TIMES
Hoping to avoid getting clocked like Mario by an anvil, video game maker Nintendo Co. slashed the price of its flagship GameCube console by one-third, to less than $100.
The aggressive move this week highlights how far the Japanese company has fallen in recent years -- from a position of overwhelming dominance to a distant last place in the U.S. market, which accounts for more than one-third of global game sales.
Worldwide, Nintendo still claims second place, behind Sony Corp.
But in North America, Sony and Microsoft Corp. have pounded Nintendo with more powerful machines and a broader range of games, capturing teenage and twentysomething gamers who spend more than the younger children to whom Nintendo has traditionally appealed.
Competitors keep prices
Executives at Sony, which sells its PlayStation 2 console for $179, said they would not match Nintendo's price cut. Microsoft said it would maintain the current $179 price for its Xbox. The GameCube is now the same price as Nintendo's ubiquitous handheld game device, Game Boy Advance SP.
Nintendo executives said the price cut would boost market share. "We believe this is a mass-market price point," said George Harrison, senior vice president of marketing for Nintendo's U.S. operations.
That still would be a far cry from the 90 percent market share Nintendo enjoyed in the late 1980s and early '90s with its NES and Super NES consoles. In Nintendo's 2003 fiscal year, which ended in March, sales fell 9 percent from the year before, to $4.2 billion. Profits fell 37 percent to $561 million.