Should also point out that the XBO technically hasn't seen its first true price cut since the $399 SKU is a debundle/base model that in retrospect, probably should have been available upon launch to look more competitive price-wise with the PS4.
Free game bundling is still bundling; while bundles can effectively reduce the overall cost to consumers and sure, if someone wanted to sell the bundled games to recover a portion of the initial cost of the console (pointless unless one is never planning on buying games for said console) can effectively reduce the cost, a price drop is taking an existing SKU and permanently (yes; we've seen plenty of XBO sales off the MSRP, but those have all been temporary discounts) changing the MSRP.
But sure; effective cost savings to a potential XBO buyer could be: save $100 by removing Kinect, save $60 with free copy of Madden 2014, and save $60 with a free copy of Destiny or whatever other game a consumer was planning on buying along with the initial console purchase. So a buyer could say they saved up to $220 off the initial Kinect bundle XBO MSRP of $499 (which hasn't changed), but this is still not the same as paying $280 for a base XBO even if the effective price is the same.
And this is why free software bundles make more sense for hardware manufacturers, even when they are giving away hard copies of any game of a buyer's choice and it's why we keep seeing holiday software bundles being thrown in each year.







