Three months after release, Microsoft’s panic price cut is an insult to its most loyal fans. And as an added kick in the jewels they get to see later adopters pick up Titanfall for free.
“There’s no other way to assess such an immediate and drastic price cut less than three months after release. It’s a panic move from Microsoft.”
Microsoft took a lot of people off guard today by announcing a price cut in the UK on the Xbox One, a games console it only released last November.
Critics, analysts, fans, marketers and everyone else with a throwaway opinion had been calling out Microsoft for its overpriced console since it first revealed the price point at E3 last year, but it was still a shock to see the company slash £30 off the machine and throw in a copy of Titanfall to boot.
Yep, Titanfall. The most anticipated game on the console. Possibly the most-anticipated game of the year. The one many had been holding off buying the console for. At the risk of repeating myself, now you can pick up the console for less and the game for free.
Surely none were more shocked than the early adopters of the Xbox One, those dedicated fans who bought the machine on day one. These are the fans who not only helped push the console to more than 3.9 million units shipped worldwide but also hoovered up the first batch of high-profile releases, no matter how they reviewed.
Clearly, sales of Microsoft’s Xbox One are lagging behind Sony’s PlayStation 4 in the UK. There’s no other way to assess such an immediate and drastic price cut less than three months after release. It’s a panic move from Microsoft.
It cannot let Sony get ahead and stay ahead this early in the console lifecycle otherwise it remains in second place for years. And in a race that only has two competitors, second place is first loser.
This may be Microsoft levelling the playing field with Sony, but it does so at the cost of pulling the rug out from under the asses of its most loyal supporters.
Obviously people buy a console on day one for many reasons, and no-one forced them to drop £429 on their hardware of choice.
But neither did they expect to see the price cut so quickly and have to fork out £50 for a game later adopters are now going to get for free.
“Microsoft’s latest backtrack for its games console is more of a “fuck you package” to the fans it should be grateful to.”
When Microsoft cut the price of the original Xbox in 2002 (for the same reason – sluggish sales) it offered two free games to early adopters and an extra controller. So far, there has been no such “thank you package”.
Indeed, Microsoft’s latest backtrack for its games console – of which there have been a ludicrous amount – is more of a “fuck you package” to the fans it should be grateful to for supporting it so far in this console war.
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