Well, that was… quick? Within its first full year on the market, the Xbox One has gone from a $499 all-in-one console to a $349 Kinect-less device.
Announced today, the Xbox One will carry a special $50 price drop across all of its models and bundles (AND BUNDLES!) from November 2, 2014 until January 3, 2015. That covers the entire holiday season, giving plenty of time for us to cash in our gift cards.
The curious and sudden price drop comes hot on the heels of a brutal “defeat” in September’s NPD retail sales numbers, which saw the Playstation 4 outsell the Xbox One for the 9th month in a row this year, even though Microsoft added free retail games as a special promotion. Microsoft has consistently been playing catch-up to Sony this generation, something that doesn’t do great for Marketing and even worse for investors.
So, from an initial $499 price the console dropped to $449 during Titanfall‘s release, and then again to $399 with the removal of the Kinect in June. The latest $349 price — which the company notes is a “holiday promotion” — is 30 percent lower than at launch.
Paint it however you’d like, this is definitely a sign of Panic Mode by Microsoft. It does not want to lose this generation so early (even though the PS3 managed to catch up to the Xbox 360 over its lifetime). By dropping to $50 lower than the Playstation 4 and just $50 than the Wii U, and with a slate of strong exclusives that includes Sunset Overdrive, Forza Horizon 2, and the Master Chief Collection, Microsoft does seem to be going all in.
To consumers this is perhaps the best thing that could have happened. That sweet, sweet white Xbox One Sunset Overdrive bundle looks delicious, and the cost is now much more manageable to people looking to finally get in to this new generation of gaming devices. Sony’s big exclusive games this season seem to be the much problematic DriveClub and Little Big Planet 3, neither of which have been announced as bundled in.
It’ll be interesting to see how the Xbox One fares this season now that it has an extremely tempting mix of value and price, and if it will turn the tide of sales competition. Either way, it looks as though consumers are going to score bigger than ever this year.
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