Microsoft loves to nickel and dime their customers.
Want Wi-Fi added to your Xbox 360? We got that and it will only cost you an arm and half a leg. Want a bigger HDD? lol, okay, how about something 3 times more expensive than the 'market' price for something equivalent? Want to see movie too? Sure, there's a format nobody wants (hint, not Blu-ray) that will set you back only a couple hundred $$$ and buy it quick coz we're going to drop it and stop supporting it before you can figure out how to spell 'useless'. Or, lately on the Xbone, "yes, our gamepads are the best and they were always the best but if you don't mind spending a couple hundred bucks, here's our super-gamepad because s___ers are born every sencod so order one immediately".
The next Xbox? Sure, you're right about subsidized price. The NSA/CIA/FBI... whatever are really, really interested in what's going on in your living room so of course they are going to subsidize 'eyes and ears'. So expect a Kinect, maybe not named that way. I agree that i's going to be mostly a 'service' with a wearable microphone/bodycam/motion seensor but it's got to be inifintely upgradeable because of revenue stream. The 'standard' config won't do much. So, of course, you will be able to play most games at the very lowest settings but you will always be able to buy upgrades that would move you up on the settings scale. And, of course, the upgrades you invested your savings to upgrade to maybe 'medium settings' will probably quickly become 'lowest settings' for the next batch of games which is okay because you can always buy more upgrades.
