Microsoft Drops Retail Vista Prices

The Ultimate and Premium editions of Vista will shed $80 to $30 from their prices in a move to simply sell more copies.

If the much-anticipated, slightly beleaguered launch of Vista Service Pack 1 still doesn’t have Windows XP holdouts running down to the store to get on board with Vista, Microsoft is hoping its latest move will: dropping the price. On Thursday, the company announced price cuts on several stand-alone retail versions of Windows Vista.

Microsoft’s top-shelf Windows Vista Ultimate package will drop from $399 to $319 in stores, while the upgrade version available to current Windows XP owners will go from $259 to $219. The less fully featured Windows Vista Premium upgrade will go from $159 to $129.

According to Microsoft’s corporate vice president for consumer product marketing, Brad Brooks, retail copies of Vista used to see primarily to techie early adopter types, but tests in some markets showed Microsoft could get non-techies to buy retail versions of Vista by lowering prices. “While the promotions varied region to region, one constant emerged – an increase in demand among consumers that went beyond tech enthusiasts and build-it-yourself types,” he said. “The success of these promotions has inspired us to make some broader changes to our pricing structures, to reach a broader range of consumers worldwide.”

The price cuts have been timed to coincide with the official release of Vista Service Pack 1, which is slated to reach widespread availability in March.