Serious question. Would have been a pretty big crowd pleaser and I don't think anyone can tell me that they couldn't find the 5 minutes to fit that announcement in their conference.

The only thing I can imagine is that they want to lower the amount of people that buy a PS4 instead of an X1 because of the price difference in the next couple weeks, since I'd say most people are more willing to wait 3 weeks than an indefinite amount of time, but I'd say that number would easily be countered by the number of people that were going to buy a X1 at $500 and are now waiting a couple more weeks to get it at $400 instead.

So...why?

to save room for games games and more games oh and did i mention games

Everyone who bought a Xbox One in May will be pretty pissed. It's damage control!

Only one answer really. They got bigger better things to show and talk about

Looking at the sale date I think they will announce it again at E3.

But that would defeat the only logical reason I could think of. That the conference was too full of games already.

Also it might be kinda awkward grandly announcing the drop of the thing that they pretended was the most essential thing last year at a conference.

Games games games games for E3... Phil Spencer I believe him that he care about games and the gamers... And when he became the boss we saw so many chances that benefit gamers and I feel more come..

To show way better stuff at E3. I'm glad they got this out of the way now. That probably fits in another game or 2 for their E3 conference.

Don't understand the 'because E3 is games, games, games' argument. Why not announce it the week before E3 to get the good press going and only have one week of downward sales?

They need to drop it at the end of this quarter based on their projections and they need to give consumers fair warning to this change for the best result, I suppose. But you'd think this would certainly lowerX1 sales until the new SKU.

I doubt it's because "they have so many other bigger and better things to show at E3 they couldn't fit it". Honestly this announcement could have been really short.
Maybe they also wanted the security of pre-recorded presentation about it to be sure it didn't just sound like "we figured out nobody really wants this so we're dropping it". The video allowed them to be more tactful, perhaps, take their sweet time.

Maybe they didn't want the bitter-sweet feeling that would come when the audience applauds them dropping a product. (;

Because they'll piss off everyone who bought it in May? Of course now very few people are actually going to buy the console this month so I'm not sure the trade off was worth it.