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Microsoft has already kicked off its latest price cuts for the Xbox 360 in Japan, after managing to clear out most its retail stock in the region thanks largely to the release of Tales of Vesperia.  Thanks to the reduced pricing, Microsoft manages to make the 20GB Xbox 360 Arcade model cheaper than the Nintendo Wii in Japan.  Now the company confirms this will be the case in North America as well.

Starting tomorrow, Microsoft is slashing the official retail pricing for most of its Xbox 360 consoles by $50 USD.  As a result, the 60GB Xbox 360 "Premium" consoles will retail for $299.99 USD, while the 120GB Xbox 360 Elite will be priced at $399.99 USD.  The big exception is the $279.99 USD Xbox 360 Arcade model which gets a beefier $80 USD price cut, making its price $199.99 USD as of September 5th.  This officially makes the Xbox 360 Arcade the cheapest home console in the North American market, beating Nintendo's $249 USD Wii.

The Xbox 360 "Premium" already received a price reduction earlier in July, though this only applied to the older 20GB models which Microsoft intended to "quietly" replace with its newer 60GB edition.  Most of the Xbox 360 Premium consoles you see in retail at this point should be these new 60GB models.  Unfortunately, the July price cut didn't quite help Microsoft as much as it wanted, as its hardware sales for the same month (as collated by the NPD Group) trailed those for the Wii and Sony PlayStation 3 consoles. It's no surprise that Microsoft is aiming to motivate demand for the 360 in time for the lucrative fourth quarter with this newest round of price reductions.