Amazon US November monthly bestsellers and general Amazon-based discussion.

[binary solo]

Shadow1980 said:

binary solo said:

When did MS announce its temporary price drop last year? Was it in October or November? AC:U launched in November and the ACU bundle was $350 from the outset, but how soon before the AC:U bundle did MS announce?

The price cut went into effect November 2. Apparently, the ACU bundle was released the same day.

The problem this time around is that MS knows a temporary price cut is untennable. They know if they move to $299 then it has to be a permanent move because if they move back to $350 in the new year their sales will plummet horriby. So, in terms of afforability of price movement they can't just think in terms of this final month and a half of the year. While it would have a much lower effect it might help for a permanent price drop to $329. That might be affordable as a permanent move and it does give Xb one a price advantage over PS4. And everyone knows Xb one can't be competitive against PS4 at the same price. This will be strongly driven home to everyone if PS4 winds up winning October NPD, which is a far more likely scenario than anyone thought possible just a few months ago.

I wonder how much that waffling on the permanence of the XBO's price cut hurt them. It if it did have an impact, it didn't matter much after tax season. Q1 was indeed down YoY, but by only a little under 7% YoY. Meanwhile, Q2 was up 60% and Q3 was up almost 17%. Overall, the XBO is up 17% YoY as of September. The price cut did help a little, which is in keeping with previous Xbox systems getting only modest boosts from their initial price cuts.

Ok so it becomes increasingly unlikely that MS announces a true price cut as we get deeper into November. What we're likely to see is more cut priced limited offer / specific retailer deals.

Considering they were down YoY for the first quarter, and you'd expect them to be up YoY by some %, I'd say that week, or so, of vascillating and returning to the original [Kinectless] price had a substantial short term negative effect. But it was such a short waffle that in terms of the overall effect on sales for the year (financial and calendar year) the effect was pretty negligible. The important lesson was that there is no way they can use the same tactic, because they know if would be a disaster if the went through with it this time, and people wouldn't believe them. If we assume that some proportion of late 2014 Xb one sales was because people thought the price cut was only going to be temporary (more fool them I say) and they would have otherwise waited if they new the price cut was permanent, then trying the temporary price cut tactic again is unlikely to fool a new pool of people into buying before they intended.

Also it's just a bad look to drop the price after the launch of the lastest game in your number 1 franchise of all time. If you want to drop the price you do it before the game launches.

Back to the Amazon chart. I am very surprised to see BO3 still inside the top 10. Amazon no longer has a guarantee of delivery on the launch day, and normally that should signal the start of the decline in the charts for that bundle. That's what happened for the Halo 5 bundle. Just how big is this Black Ops Bundle going to be?