Tokyo-Sony Corp's game unit announced Tuesday that it will cut the prices of PlayStation3 game consoles and sell a cheaper edition of PS3 in Japan.

The new cheap edition is to be sold from November 11th, the company said. Sony Computer Entertainment already took similar action in other countries.

Although Sony began to sell the PS3 last November, sales were hurt by fierce competition from rival consoles such as Nintendo's "Wii' and Microsoft's 'Xbox', which were also priced lower.

As holiday season is coming, Sony expects to catch up and sell many consoles by reducing the prices and introducing a lower priced edition.

The 20GB console price is to be cut by about 10% from its retail price from Oct.17th. As for the cheap edition, it will be sold 10,000 yen cheaper than the 20GB console. The cheap edition has 40GB HDD, but it cannot play older PlayStation2 games and only has two USB ports instead of four.

The 20GB console is to be sold at 44,980 yen and 60GB one is at 54,980 yen from Oct.17th. The cheap edition is to be sold at 39,980 yen from Nov.11th in Japan. Furthermore, the company will present "Spiderman3' Blue-ray Disk (BD) to 200,000 customers who newly bought those consoles.

Japan Electronics Sony