It's almost a given that a price drop will precede this rollout. The question is, will Sony jump with them? If XB1 goes $399 in the US, will Sony jump to $349?
As for the $499 launch price, I think they knew the strong core fanbase would happily pay that price, and for however many they sell, they are getting an extra $100 per unit. It's a risky strategy on one hand, giving the lead to Sony easily, and on the flip side, let's call it ~5M units before the first real price drop (I don't rate the miniscule UK drop, and with currency exchange and all it's actually still more expensive, right?) What's 5M units x $100?
Weigh that against what that high price has cost them, it's murky. Obviously the ideal for them would have been to launch at $499 for Xmas, then drop to $399 Jan 1st, outside of the terrible PR in such a calculating move.
So I'm thinking that was mostly financially motivated regardless, at the end of the day, like all corporate decisions outside of the rarest exception.
As for waiting to get XB1 to these other markets, hah. I wonder if it even matters really. They've probably written off basically everything but the US/UK in terms of relevancy to them. Which is both stupid and smart I suppose. Now they make PR spin to say 'oh, we're bringing X to Japan and Y to Europe, and excited to bring these games to these players', but in the boardrooms and offices they will be 99.9% focused on US/UK.
Whether or not they launched it Xmas '13, or Xmas '15 in those other regions, they're not terribly relevant there anyway. PC gaming is really strong in some of those areas as well, making the XB1 seem superfluous in many respects. For example I can pretty much guarantee that South Korea will be a total flop zone for them.
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