Amazon.com released yesterday a brand new offer for Microsoft’s Xbox Live Gold Subscription card, offering it for $29.97, which is considerably lower than the old price of $49.99. The discount is part of a new accessories sale initiative introduced by the popular retailer, which includes a 25 percent cut off of hundreds of video games accessories for the Wii, the Nintendo DS, PSP, Xbox 360 and PlayStation 2 and 3. The offer will end on January 31, 2009.

The subscription offers 12 months of full Xbox Live access, including worldwide multiplayer gaming and also the ability to download free videogame demos and trailers. Users will also have the possibility to download additional content such as TV shows, full games, movies and many other related items.

Xbox Live registers more than 17 million subscribers at this point, and the decision to lower the annual fee probably comes as a direct result of Sony’s PlayStation Network service which provides similar features for free.

Still, Xbox is doing great at this point, with no reason to worry. The company managed to sell 28 million consoles worldwide, which puts it above the PlayStation 3 by more than 8 million units. Also, according to market research specialist NPD Group, the Xbox 360 outperformed the PlayStation 3 last month by a ratio of 2 to 1.

The battle on the console market will continue, with each company looking to release the next big hit or to cover a new area. The prices for the consoles, games and accessories were all expected to slowly fall, but considering the fact that this is one of the few industries that is actually announcing record sales in these hard times, the prices might stay the same over the next several months.