I know this would be a near impossible sell at Microsoft considering the amount of money we're talking ($600 million or more just for the launch consoles) but Microsoft really needs to cut the price to $399 before launch and here are the reasons why:
They are at risk of losing all the gains they spent billions making with the Xbox and Xbox 360
The US, UK, Mexico, and several other countries have been on a trajectory to be completely controlled by Microsoft consoles and the price of the Xbox One stands in the way of that happening. Last year it would have seemed impossible for the successor of the PS3 to beat the successor of the Xbox 360 in the US but now it looks like it will happen in the short term and possibly even long term. Once a console starts to gain momentum it requires a lot of money to compete with it and even more to break that momentum. Microsoft appears to be gambling in the hopes that the momentum the PS4 has is either short term, that games like Titanfall will break it, or that a price cut in the future will be enough. That gamble could be very costly if they are wrong and leave them in an even worse position down the road than cutting price now.
People tend to follow to where their friends are gaming
Many people used to wonder why the Xbox 360 was able to charge for online and still sell more consoles than PS3 in the US. The secret is actually pretty simple in that many people were simply following to where their friends went. Since the 360 launched earlier than PS3 it was able to capture many online console gamers. Later on to many it became the choice of going to a system with free online or going to one that had your friends but charged for online. To many people that choice was simple even if it was more costly in the long run. Now because of the console refresh it's back to trying to lure in the first initial batch of gamers and if Playstation has the momentum and captures a lot of them it will be extremely difficult for Microsoft to convince people later on to choose an Xbox even if it does have a price cut.
It's the last major advantage the Playstation 4 has left
Microsoft has systematically reversed their decisions and removed one advantage the Playstation 4 had after another. Yet the most glaring advantage of all has not been removed. It won't matter to the vast majority of people which one has the graphics advantage since most people would be unable to spot the differences without them being pointed out but a price advantage is another thing and nobody misses that. The fact that this decision would be made so close to launch also has the effect of giving it much more attention than a price cut down the road. A price cut now would have major news outlets covering it, the gaming forums exploding with discussion, and a massive amount of attention on Twitter and many other places. That kind of attention may be nearly impossible to get later on, especially if public perception already views one console as the clear winner.
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Anyways those are my opinions and although I know the chances of it happening are extremely slim I hope it does as it's much more fun to watch a real race than one that has been decided near the beginning.
