We have been chasing this story for the past couple of days, but our moles have not been very forthcoming with information regarding the possible price drop on the Xbox 360. We have now been able to confirm that Microsoft is slated to announce at E3 next week that they will be dropping the price of the Xbox 360 Pro model to US$299.

The move to cut the price of the Xbox 360 Pro does not come as much of a surprise, since competition from both the Wii and the Playstation 3 have put Microsoft in the position of having to get more aggressive to compete for market share.

The somewhat unexpected success of the Wii and the aggressive cost reductions on the Playstation 3 have put a bit more pressure on Microsoft than perhaps they thought would be possible. We are hearing that this will lead to another big round of price wars heading into the fall selling season. While we don’t expect Nintendo to drop the price of the Wii, we do expect availability of the Wii to be much better this fall and it should continue into the holiday season.

As for the Playstation 3, Sony has been able to achieve better than expected cost reductions on the unit, which does give them a bit more breathing room should they consider a price reduction to be more competitive this holiday season; but we don’t expect them to announce a price drop on the PlayStation 3 at E3.

It is not yet known if Microsoft will introduce another version of the Xbox 360 console at E3. Our sources continue to tell us that Microsoft is still undecided on what they intend to do as far as the high-end Elite model goes. Some of our sources suggest that they will roll out a new or updated version of the high-end Xbox 360 model, but they may wait to see what Sony does before making a final commitment to their strategy going into the holiday season.