Gamestop’s president Tony Bartel revealed during a financial earnings call yesterday that the Xbox One is seeing “stronger demand” as a result of un-bundling the Kinect and selling the console for $399 USD, £349, 399 Euros and $499 AUD which parallels with the Play Station 4 consoles, this price cut begins on June 9 but you can pre-order the cheaper version now.
Tony Bartel’s Full quote:
“I definitely think we’re already seeing in our stores that there’s a stronger demand as a result of the price drop. The good news for us is….. we’ll sell a lot more units and that means there will be more (Xbox One) units out there to put software on.”
But hold on, don’t go jumping on that train yet if you haven’t already, perhaps you might be thinking that this is great now, and if you want a Kinect in the future you can just buy it separately, right? (and yes that is an option) but doing that will almost certainly cost you more in the long run. One must think about how much the extra Kinect unit sold separately will cost, Phil Spencer himself has said that the unit will not be a hundred dollars exactly but didn’t elaborate any further, anyone with a basic retail understanding will predict that Kinect sold separately will cost more, than the hundred dollars it’s worth when bundled, that’s just how it works; when you pack everything into one box it becomes cheaper, because it takes less space to store and deliver. Microsoft will surely lose money making this move and you will be the one who pays extra for it if you don’t make the right decision:
“Kinect remains an important part of our vision,” head of Xbox Phil Spencer said following the announcement. “We will continue to innovate on Kinect. I think it’s an important differentiator for us.”
Now I am in no way saying that this is a bad thing, of course if Kinect never interested you at all and you held out on buying an Xbox One because of that reason, then by all means go for it, but if you’re unsure you need to make this decision carefully, because buying an extra Kinect unit down the track will most likely cost you more money, in which case it’s just better to save up and buy the bundle.
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