Microsoft and Sony announce prices for Xbox One and PS4

On Monday (June 10), Microsoft and Sony announced the pricing of the companies’ respective new entertainment consoles. The Xbox One will be $499 while the PS4 will be $399 (prices in Canadian dollars).

Both hardware manufacturers were less specific on availability. The Xbox One will come in November, while the PS4 is arriving “this holiday”.

The Xbox One comes with a 500 GB hard drive, Blu-ray player, the new Kinect controller, and a Xbox One wireless controller.

Microsoft also announced a new design for the Xbox 360. On stage at the Galen Centre in Los Angeles on Monday morning, Yusuf Mehdi said the new consoles were “smaller, sleeker, quieter than ever”.

Available immediately, the new Xbox 360 comes in three configurations:

• $200 for 4 GB of hard drive space
• $300 for 250 GB of hard drive space
• $300 for a 4 GB hard drive and including the Kinect hands-free controller

But with recent revelations that the Xbox One will need to authenticate using an Internet connection once every 24 hours and will limit the sharing of disc-based games, Microsoft has been taking some heat from the gaming community.

During its press event at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum on Monday evening, Sony representatives made the point again and again that the PS4 was built for gamers first.

Jack Tretton, who head Sony Computer Entertainment of America, said that Sony was “delivering what gamers want most, without any restrictions” and that the PS4 would play any used game and would not require an Internet connection.

Andrew House, president and group CEO of Sony Computer Entertainment, said that “true consumer ownership and consumer trust are central to everything we do”.

And while the exact configuration of the PS4 was not detailed, House did hold up a unit for the audience to see. So in addition to pricing, consumers now know what both consoles look like.