MS had a solid Jan-March quarter due to Titanfall bundle at the begining of March. New sku means every retailer took on more units to have stock (obviously).

This new sku is coming out at the end of the quarter (again). This forces every retailer to take on more units (again). MS will look to have a solid quarter due to shipping the new sku to stock every retailer. Financial games padding the books (every company makes moves like this).

All my opinion of course. Agree or ridicule I think it's the most logical

Why now? Just wait for April NPD to reveal the answer.

Good question, probably sticking with the two sku's and expecting baseline to pick up. I'm talking about the timing of it all. If they didn't do it this quarter there probably would have been a ridiculous drop of quarter to quarter which would look real bad

Sure, that is probably a factor but this move would still require planing for a while and I don't think it would have been enough time for it to have been reactory decision based on April

It seems pretty obvious that this was planned to be an E3 announcement.  My guess is that April NPD was so bad that they decided not to wait to announce it just to deflect some of the bad press.

A move like that is not based on a month worth data. Not even on those first quarters numbers, that were reseanable good.

MS decided based on their sales projection for the rest of the year.

PS: April NPD won´t be that bad for Microsoft, nor that good for Sony.

Except Sony has been outselling MS almost 2:1 since a week after launch. MS has had this planned for awhile and when even Titanfall proved that PS4 was still far more favorable they had to reach price parity. Removing Kinect was the only logical choice as its not required for the system.

They could take a $100 hit and still keep Kinect. Howerver the loud voices of NeoGaf would still caling the Kinect as a reason for price/power disparity.

The 360 bleed a lot more money for years.

They won't do another major hit like that. It doesn't make sense in the long run, especially when you're only matching the price of competition... i.e. not giving yourself a distinct edge.

X360 was $100 or more less than PS3 all the time and they made money back up in a lot of software / Live sales. Xbone does not have either luxury. It would be financial disaster to lose a lot on this.

Now they can likely make small profit from hardware and achieve price parity allowing them to focus on other incentives like entertainment options beyond gaming and/or good bundles.

Disagree on all points.  March was bad for MS, April will be MUCH worse.  They couldn't wait till June to make a move.