I would say a cut on BF.

Exactly. I expect a price cut around tomb raider or fallout 4 release. Plus that makes it only two weeks before black Friday and parents will be hungry for deals for Christmas. Doing a price cut now would be pointless. 

It's not really giving up profit though, it's an investment to shift more consoles. Similar to pumping tens of millions into an ad campaign to increase sales.

Sony just recently dropped the price before releasing the Batman and Blops LE consoles. That can be seen as giving up profit too because they will more than likely sell very well, but they still did it.

MS were expecting a price cut but I think they didn't expect it so soon. They will have a plan and it could depend on how well they think Halo will push the X1. If they thinks it's doing great or will do great to push X1 sales to how they want, they will not cut the price. If Halo isn't meeting targets, they must be considering a price cut.

Depends on how you look at it. If you consider that the majority of people who insist on a price cut are happy to wait, and a significant number that want Halo will bite the bullet regardless - the best approach for Microsoft is to cut later, sometime in late October, early November.

And as Gribble pointed out, MS were clearly expecting a price cut by the Paris Games Show, which is around two weeks away. I reckon Gribble is likely right, MS wouldn't have been surprised by this at all.

But you're also correct, a price cut is likely heavily in the planning mix at this point.

You know xbox has lost the states when even with its biggest exclusive people think they need ANOTHER price cut to compete. Ps4 is in a very comfortable position.

Sony has no AAA exclusives. Microsoft will take them in fourth quarter in america while sony sells because it's popular. Halo is the the most popular exclusive shooter though so it will sell xboxes. Halo and Tomb Raider are the reasons why a price drop won't matter. Sony knows this hence why they are cutting the price of the playstation. They can't fight back against microsoft justifiably without AAA so they finally yielded their price point.

Phil Spencer stated earlier that he expected a price cut. It's definitely because sony has no answer for their aaas

The hyped week of Xbox One bundle announcements was a disappointment. The games included in many of the bundles weren't that compelling and the pricing - compared to where PS4 is now - doesn't provide any kind of advantage. The 1TB Halo one in particular is way overpriced when compared to the 1TB PS4 Call of Duty bundle, which is $70 less. So yes, the Xbox One is going to get a cut, though I wouldn't bet that it's going to happen this week. I imagine the cuts will come before Black Friday though.

Sony isn't responding  to the bundles. The gamesn that sell consoles are what they are responding to. Those same games have bundles.

It could all come down to a gamble, and whether Microsoft believes that Sony will have a clear shot at taking an October victory if they do nothing. I mean, even with Spencer's comments admitting the PS4's lead and saying that winning isn't their focus, I sort of figure that this is the ONE month, of all the months, they'd very much want to win, because it's the month that their biggest property, bar none, launches. Halo is seen as a sales juggernaut, and rightly so, meaning I don't think the PS4's price cut momentum being all it needs to 'Beat Halo Month' is a thing they want to have happen, ever. More than November or December, I think that the month the Prodigal Child returns is the one month they want to be able to wave the victory banner, if any month at all.

So it could boil down to 'Does Microsoft think Sony will win October if they don't match the price cut?' Presumably they have their fingers significantly more on the proverbial pulse than anyone on the site (though how much they can glean on how their competitor is selling, I've no idea,) and so it's possible that whatever their market monkeys tell them has them confident that they can still pull this victory out of the bag, be it bundle pre-order numbers or whatnot. If that's the case, then they'd be far better served holding their own price cut for November, when the PS4 is going to be having both Call of Duty and Battlefront bundles hitting the shelves.

However, if they're concerned about winning October, cutting the price again before Halo launches would help solidify an October win, as it would bring their regular consoles back to a price advantage over Sony, partially negate the higher pricing of their Halo bundle in particular that might be holding back its sales potential, and spark enough of a sales rush to keep them ahead. Even a cheaper Halo bundle would help, a 349 one just packed in with Halo 5, maybe throw in the MCC, with none of the limited edition 1TB yada yada, which would be perfect for people who don't necessarily plan to install oodles of games on their console at a time.

Soooo, yeah. I think that if they feel there's a threat to their ability to win October, they'll announce either a cheaper Halo bundle option, or cut prices outright before Halo launches. If they don't, then it might suggest that they're at the very least confident that Halo's sales-bootingness will provide all the moved units they need to win October, and are saving their additional measures for the more challenging month of November.