Microsoft’s Richard Teversham, the Xbox Europe head of marketing, was recently interviewed by British gaming site MCV. In that interview, he teases about “a number of surprises” that will hit in Q4 2006, to counter the launch of Sony’s Playstation 3 and the Nintendo Wii.

“I don’t want to reveal any plans at the moment because we want to keep a number of surprises up our sleeve. We will ensure we are good value and we’ll do that through having a variety of pricing on games, a variety of pricing on console offers.”

Microsoft has repeatedly denied that the 360 will see a price drop at the end of this year, although they haven’t explicitly denied the existence of a rumored PGR 3 Xbox 360 bundle (as reported here). And it would seem that Teversham’s careful wording on having a variety of “console offers” might give some further weight to this theory. What other surprises might Microsoft have up their sleeves? Well, with Zune expected to launch in Q4 2006, I expect that Microsoft will also be thrilling us with the interactions possible between their media player and the 360.

This all, of course, is great news for consumers who may once again see the days of pack-in games coming standard with consoles. If Nintendo decides to launch the Wii with something like Wii Sports as a pack-in (as has been speculated in a number of venues), and if MS decides to compete using a similar offering, it’ll only be a matter of time before the more expensive PS3 has to pony up.