Coz they don't care about Kinect!
Literally, have no interest ATM in moving Kinect units or not. It's not on their radar so they're just maintaining the status quo. They'll decide what to do with Kinect SKU later. No point adding a discount now and trying to manage inventory and possible retailer refunds and whatnot.
Really? Think about this from a business perspective and put all your biases aside. The holiday promotions included discounts on both SKU's. They ended that promotion and came back with another one that is only for the kinect-less version. What does that tell you, just on it's face value? It tells me one of two things. Either 1) That they don't need to discount the Kinect version because they are selling just fine or 2) It doesn't matter, because the $50 reduction isn't enough to motivate buyers to buy the Kinect version - it isn't enough of a discount.
But, if it is option 2 then think about it. Why not offer the $50 off the kinect version as well? If it doesn't motivate sales, what is the harm in just doing it across all SKU's? Is it not even going to motivate 1000 sales? 100 sales?
It doesn't make sense AT ALL to not offer this discount on the Kinect version as well, unless they've seen from their Holiday sales that people actually prefer the Kinect version to the castrated version so they aren't offering that to people who they know will eventually pay the full price and are just now trying to get the people who are cash poor.
At the same price, everyone would rather have the unit with more stuff (especially $150 more stuff going by standalone price) than not. The actual value is questionable. I'm sure it's not zero - people wouldn't mind spending $20 to have a voice-remote and Skype thing, I expect. But value in Kinect as anything more than the anaemic implementation we have and it appears it'll remain just isn't there. Hence people aren't buying XB1 for Kinect - they're buying it for the console and the games. Hence that's where MS's focus is.
We're agreed on that to a point. As long as we're also agreed that the ridiculous narrative that was popular when the One was launched that it came with an "NSA SPY camera" is over and done with. Remember that the initial narrative was that people didn't want the Kinect because it was spying on them. It's a completely different thing to say that they want it but don't want to pay $100 for it than to say they don't want it because it invades their privacy, etc...
And really, you still have yet to come up with a reason why they would launch another new price promotion that only impacts the kinect-less version. Why isn't the $50 reduction also on the One version?
Sorry, I didn't quite read your reply right. I wasn't saying people with Kinect buy less games; they probably buy just as much. I'm saying that XB Live stats show what games people are playing, and presumably show people aren't playing Kinect games or using Kinect in a huge way. These same stats show them (presumably) that the new units bought over Christmas and shown to friends are playing games, and they hope this is generates interest in others wanting to play those games, hence the price drop in the SKU that they think people want to buy (at the right price). And an ignoring of the Kinect SKU because it's mostly immaterial, a novelty seeing niche action but not anything that they can sell boxes to the mainstream with.
Huh? Ignoring the Kinect SKU takes more effort than NOT ignoring the Kinect SKU. It's far easier to just do a $50 reduction across the board than it is to only reduce the Kinect-less version by $50. The holiday sales applied to ALL SKU's. Kinect and Kinect-less. This promotion is only for Kinect-less consoles. Why would they NOT include the Kinect version unless they've seen that they already have demand for that at the current price?
The value of Kinect to the platform is near zero. The value of Kinect in itself is non-zero as it brings features to the box, but the XB1 platform could lose Kinect completely and not be any worse off.
Again, not true. The value of the Kinect is somewhere between $0-$100. And since nobody else has brought it up, I will - Sure, there's a number of people buying the Kinect version with the intention of selling them on a second hand market to get some money back. But the mere existence of a second hand market tells you that it has value. If you go on craigslist or ebay, how much are Kinects selling for? $100? After the release of the stand alone Kinect at $140 all the prices of them shot up to at least $100.
I know - I was going to buy a Sunset Overdrive console without Kinect and buy a Kinect on the second hand market, until I looked around and the cheapest 2nd hand (new) Kinect was going for $100 in the state of California.
Either way, it doesn't matter. If people are buying One units and selling their Kinects on the 2nd hand market for $50 - then that is the value of the Kinect. $50. Right now, the value of the Kinect is still right around $100. That's what people are asking for them because that's what they can sell them for.
Bottom line is that there's a very good reason why this promotion is unlike the Holiday promotion that applied to all SKU's.
I'm trying to explain it, and I still don't see how your explanation of "They just don't care about the Kinect SKU" makes any sense at all. It's actually rather absurd on its face.
