| steverhcp02 said: Well, based on the presentation its clear MSFT isnt too interested in selling to traditional xbox 360 users. Their history of charging an arm and leg for accessories combined with the presentation lead me to believe theyre withholding infor because what we will see after all the current users interested in upgrading buy a slim, MSFT will sweep in and announce the slim kinect 250gb bundle for $299 this holiday, then drop the slim to $250 on its own with natal probably at the $150 stand alone. MSFT has a knack for making us go WTF with their accessory prices compared to the logical bundled prices and i feel MSFT is far mor einterested in selling new consoles than Natal to existing users. Just like if youve been interested in a larger harddrive MSFT almost made you think twice about just buying anew xbox to get one based on their pricing, i think we will see the same thing here. This way existing users who dont upgrade to the slim who want natal will almost be forced to upgrade and buy a new console come november..... Pretty obvious why theyre not announcing the price, capitalize on upgrades now, capitalize on bundles later. |
As crazy as it sounds, I'm inclined to believe this could be the approach MS takes when they release the Kinect bundles; making it a "better value" to simply start over and buy a new console, rather than say pay over $100 to upgrade a HDD for example.
I'm not fully convinced a $399 250GB/Kinect bundle would match this mindset, but... a $299 250GB/Kinect bundle would fall squarely into this strategy. As long as MS isn't actually losing money on each of these bundles (even if they were barely breaking even), there isn't any real downside to selling a new Kinect bundle to a significant percentage of their existing user base.
Plus if the Kinect games stay priced at $60 (none of which seen during the E3 conference really justify a full game price), they will recover any losses on Kinect hardware, assuming current 360 owners aren't just buying Kinect to wave their hands and talk to their Xbox while watching movies.
There would definitely be some sore customers though if this were the scenario, namely EVERYONE who bought a 360 S at $299. All of those consumers would probably be screaming "WHERE'S MY FREE KINECT MS?!!!!!" making the $399 bundle price a lot more plausible, making it only a $50 loss for anyone who bought a 360 S for $299 and then paid another $149 for Kinect.
Also, if MS does charge more for the non-Kinect port equipped older 360s (say, $189) again, this would make the allure of simply "starting over" with a 360 S a legit option if the larger 250GB HDD and WiFi N factor into the picture to current 360 owners.
