With the holiday shopping season fast approaching, Microsoft announced a hefty, limited-time price drop for the Xbox One console. Starting early next month, the Xbox One will be available for $349 in the US. What is more, consumers will be able to buy the console for the discounted price, bundled with a video game, including: Assassin’s Creed Unity; Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare; or the Xbox One exclusive, Sunset Overdrive. Regardless of your thoughts on the console wars, this is a strong proactive move for Microsoft to try and boost Xbox One console sales.
Over the next year, the Xbox One has some strong exclusive titles on the horizon. So really, with the price drop on the horizon, the time to get the console is right now. Sunset Overdrive is already out and getting strong reviews, so Microsoft is smart to bundle a hot new exclusive with the discounted console. Between November 2014 and the 2015 holiday season, Xbox One will also feature Halo: The Master Chief Collection; Quantum Break; Crackdown 3; Fable Legends; Halo 5: Guardians; and Rise of the Tomb Raider. That is a strong portfolio of exclusive game titles for the Xbox One. So over the next year, Microsoft will release a strong lineup of games that are only playable for the Xbox One. However, the limited price drop starts in November and will only be around for a short time. I imagine that the decision makers are hoping that players will buy the console en mass over the next two months, so consumers will own the console for the big upcoming exclusives.
I am not sure if the price drop will be enough to entice consumers to put the Xbox One ahead of sales figures for the PlayStation 4. However, the prospect of owning an Xbox One for a much cheaper price to go along with the new upcoming games, is an interesting one. That said, the issue of hard drive space and internal memory still lingers. Previously, IGN revealed that the game console only has about 365GB of hard drive memory available. So, Microsoft should also consider offering some cheap external hard drive with a huge amount of memory over the holidays. The addition of an external hard drive to the bundle would also be a good move. With my older 40GB PS3, the struggle for space for game downloads often became frustrating. Considering that some games require a large chunk of hard drive space, I would like to avoid that with the Xbox One .
The Xbox One console bundle price drop begins on November 2 and will be valid until January 3, 2015.