Cut to the bone: will there be an E3 price cut for XB1?

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It's E3 fun poll time!

Wii U is dead, PS4 is repping hard; the only industry excitement appears to be Xbone's tightrope act. Lets turn up the music and crack open the Mountain Dew with a poll party!

So, which of these options do you think will be closest to the X1's price post E3?

 

[Shifty Geezer]

A price cut all of 3 weeks after a Kinect-less SKU announcement? I'm confused. Kinect-free XB1 is due June 9th, announced at $399. E3 is June 10th. Are MS going to announce a price-cut for this new SKU the day after it's released? Or is the Kinect-SKU going to be price reduced to the same price as the Kinect-free SKU?

 

[RancidLunchmeat]

The Xb0x has already had a price cut. The idea that it is a new SKU and not a price cut is ridiculous. I Turned on my 360 last weekend and was immediately greeted with the main tile advertisement showing the Xb0x saying "Now only $399!".

Sure, the Kinect was mysteriously absent from the advertisement and very well might have been the first time I saw any MS ad featuring the Xb0x without the Kinect but it certainly wasn't called out. The intention was to show that the Xb0x is now only $399. Not that there was suddenly a newer, lower priced option.

It is $399, there is no Kinect, there has already been a price drop, there won't be yet another one announced at E3.

 

[djskribbles]

It's a pseudo price drop, not a real one. Value wise it's worse, but a better option if you don't care about Kinect/Titanfall and you don't want to be bothered trying to sell them.

But I agree... they're not going to announce a price drop at E3, not after announcing the new SKU at 399 and when it's not even available until near E3 as Shifty pointed out. Dropping the Kinect SKU to 449 doesn't make much sense either because they're going to sell the standalone kinect for $100 or more.

 

[Dave Baumann]

Kinect-free XB1 is due June 9th, announced at $399. E3 is June 10th. Are MS going to announce a price-cut for this new SKU the day after it's released?

Yeah, if there was a plan to do this then it would make a mockery of having the SKU pre-orderable at $399.

 

[function]

As no-one has actually paid $399 for their Kinectless Xbox, and won't do until June 9th, I thought MS might be planning a simultaneous launch / conference / price cut on the 9th.

Seeing as how their conference is on the 9th, and the Kinectless Xbone is launching on the 9th, if they were going to drop the price - and they need to - it'd make sense to do it on the ... 9th. And if you think about it, a sub $399 Kinectless box implies a sub $499 Kinected box, and it actually makes sense to announce something like that at E3, because it helps you create a stir.

MS had to let people know that a Kinectless box was coming to stop people Xbandoning their platform, but that doesn't mean they wouldn't want to save news of a cut until their big marketing event of the year.

I don't see cutting price in a big PR stunt before anyone has actually paid $399 to be a big issue. Hell, Nintendo actually raised Wii prices during the pre-order period. *shrug*

I could well be wrong, but if I'm right I'll be a hero in my own bathroom, like with the 160 shaders thing. GLORY OR DEATH.

 

[Rangers]

Seems obvious, there wont be one.

Weirdly I was thinking of doing a complex price cut, kinect/not kinect, poll like this. Then MS just settled the issue a few days ago.

I think the only cut you'll next get is 349/449. When is the question. If sales are OK I suspect it'll be a bit. Heck as unaggressive as MS is, who knows when.

 

[Wynix]

The Kinect version might, but only to $450.

Even suggesting a price cut on the Kinectless version at E3 is absurd.

 

[Rangers]

Doing a $50 split would probably skew sales too much towards the Kinect version. It would especially make a mockery of the pricing structure as Phil Spencer already basically said Kinect stand alone will retail for 129-149.

Granted, I personally have said in the past you'd probably have to sell the +Kinect Xbone for just $20-$40 more to make it sell as well as the non version.

As my longtime 360 gamer friend, who hasn't purchased a One yet, said when I informed him 399 Xbox doesn't include Kinect, "I dont want Kinect". And that's that. Always interesting to get opinions of more normal people who dont frequent message boards. But there's a group of core gamers who dont care about Kinect at all.

 

[RancidLunchmeat]

As no-one has actually paid $399 for their Kinectless Xbox, and won't do until June 9th, I thought MS might be planning a simultaneous launch / conference / price cut on the 9th.

Seeing as how their conference is on the 9th, and the Kinectless Xbone is launching on the 9th, if they were going to drop the price - and they need to - it'd make sense to do it on the ... 9th. And if you think about it, a sub $399 Kinectless box implies a sub $499 Kinected box, and it actually makes sense to announce something like that at E3, because it helps you create a stir.

No, the $399 Xb0x promotions implies a $399 Xb0x.

The reason they announced it early is because they don't want E3 coverage to be about dropping price or Kinect. They want it to be about whatever else they have planned, whether it be games or they continue to be stuck on stupid and spend time talking about exclusive TV shows.

The announcement was made so that it didn't take away from their E3 message, however bizarre that is going to turn out to be.

 

[Rangers]

No, the $399 Xb0x promotions implies a $399 Xb0x.

The reason they announced it early is because they don't want E3 coverage to be about dropping price or Kinect. They want it to be about whatever else they have planned, whether it be games or they continue to be stuck on stupid and spend time talking about exclusive TV shows.

The announcement was made so that it didn't take away from their E3 message, however bizarre that is going to turn out to be.

According to GAF it was actually to distract from their poor April NPD showing.

I have my doubts anybody outside the message board bubble cares about NPD at all, let alone that MS would make strategic decisions based on damage controlling it. For that matter, you pretty much have to dig through dozens of pages of Neogaf posts to even get the numbers (the mods there are careful not to surface them, as that would just lead to an NPD crackdown).

But, I do find it hard to figure another compelling reason why to announce it now instead of E3. It could have definitely been a nice cherry on top after they show a bunch of games. I think Sony's PS4 price announcement for example obviously helped them win the PR battle at 2013 E3.

 

[temesgen]

Doing a $50 split would probably skew sales too much towards the Kinect version. It would especially make a mockery of the pricing structure as Phil Spencer already basically said Kinect stand alone will retail for 129-149.

Granted, I personally have said in the past you'd probably have to sell the +Kinect Xbone for just $20-$40 more to make it sell as well as the non version.

As my longtime 360 gamer friend, who hasn't purchased a One yet, said when I informed him 399 Xbox doesn't include Kinect, "I dont want Kinect". And that's that. Always interesting to get opinions of more normal people who dont frequent message boards. But there's a group of core gamers who dont care about Kinect at all.

They can also subsidize the purchase of an XB1 using the summer laptop program from a couple years back. They can also finance XB1 with money down and LIVE subscriptions at 10 to 20 bucks a month. Lots of ways to approach it but at the end of the day if they don't have games beyond 3rd party IMO it won't matter. They need to expand the 1st party line up. I think E3 will be very telling if they finally get it or not. Gamers have spoken they want their game machine to primarily a game machine and interestingly enough they want games too. Who would have thought?

 

[Cyan]

As no-one has actually paid $399 for their Kinectless Xbox, and won't do until June 9th, I thought MS might be planning a simultaneous launch / conference / price cut on the 9th.

Seeing as how their conference is on the 9th, and the Kinectless Xbone is launching on the 9th, if they were going to drop the price - and they need to - it'd make sense to do it on the ... 9th. And if you think about it, a sub $399 Kinectless box implies a sub $499 Kinected box, and it actually makes sense to announce something like that at E3, because it helps you create a stir.

MS had to let people know that a Kinectless box was coming to stop people Xbandoning their platform, but that doesn't mean they wouldn't want to save news of a cut until their big marketing event of the year.

I don't see cutting price in a big PR stunt before anyone has actually paid $399 to be a big issue. Hell, Nintendo actually raised Wii prices during the pre-order period. *shrug*

I could well be wrong, but if I'm right I'll be a hero in my own bathroom, like with the 160 shaders thing. GLORY OR DEATH.

I think they are going to keep the current price drop for a while. Still, they could make a surprise announcement and there could be a price drop which could be related to the original vision of the console.

Your hunch could happen if they combined digital downloads with physical media. That would great from the very beginning, I think. Those who preferred the original vision could enjoy it and those more traditional would have a choice too.

Perhaps they are going to announce a disc-less Xbox One this E3.

I mean, it would let you to opt-in for the digital download program, where you could lend your games to up to 10 friends, daily online check and so on. Opting-in could be possible with a disc based Xbox One too.

People could also opt-out whether they use digital downloads or not. Those non opting-in could enjoy both physical and DD games but shouldn't lend DD games.

That's the only way I think we'd see a price drop by then and let people who prefer something more akin to the original vision like RancidLunchMeat and others, have that option.

These are officially my options for this to happen, but I believe there won't be another price drop that soon.

 

[eastmen]

MS nor sony will drop price at e3. We might see one of them drop price in the fall tho.

I'm hoping Nintendo drops the price , I want to pick up a wii u but it has to be $300 or less with Mario kart for me to bite.

 

[McHuj]

No price drop, but they might announce that it's coming with a downloadable game or two.

 

[Deleted member 11852]

As with others, no price drop. The non-Kinect SKU doesn't go on sale until 9 June (the day before E3) and that's Microsoft's current/next move. They'll wait to see how they works out before looking at other options and they can explain away any further dips on sales by saying people are waiting for the $399 package.

 

[MrFox]

Same here, I don't see how the 399 can change, it was just announced. Then the bundle is sitting just fine at $100 difference.

If Kinect2 cost about $75 in parts, it could be sold for around $149 since peripherals usually have a good markup for resellers to be happy, and the bundle must remain an advantage.

I won't be surprised if they have a $50 price drop on Black Friday though, and still make a profit on both SKUs. I was thinking there's an opening for DDR3-2133 to drop significantly around that time frame, yield for other parts would have possibly improved compared to launch, and there might even be a minor motherboard revision?

 

[Jedi2016]

For all intents and purposes, there's already been a price cut. They won't do another one so soon after the last one.

 

[AzBat]

For all intents and purposes, there's already been a price cut. They won't do another one so soon after the last one.

Considering how MS has consistently been wording the new Kinect-less SKU as not a price drop. I wouldn't put it past them to make a price drop announcement at E3. Especially if they find that sales are bad enough to warrant it. BTW I was already expecting a $50 drop before Halo ships this fall.

Tommy McClain

 

[DuckThor Evil]

I don't think it'll go for less than $399 just yet, but considering that it was sold with Kinect + game for $449 for quite some time recently, I have to think a standalone unit at $349 possibly isn't too far in the future.