News - Xbox One receives pre-Christmas $50 price cut in the US

[HEXUS]

Microsoft drops the Xbox One's price until year's end in a bid to rival Sony.

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[The Hand]

The irony is the XBox One is doing moderately well in the US/North America. I would have thought Europe would have got this deal too at least. Sony is selling over 3 times as many PS4s in Europe compared to XBO as of the 18th October. Maybe MS are trying to win decisively in one area.. and maybe they're already resigned to defeat/distant second place in Europe etc.

[Saracen]

Personally, and I understand this may be a minority view, there are NO circumstances under which XBox One in current spec is going in my house. At an absolute minimum, I want to either completely disable Kinect cameras and/or microphones except when I positively want them, or better yet, a version with no Kinect in the first place. That's not my only issue, but it is a red line issue. And unlike Obama, my red lines really are make/break lines.

Without that, MS could offer me a completely free XBO, and every game I fancied, and I still wouldn't accept. So, personally, $50 certainly isn't going to change my mind.

If they do ever come up with the much-rumoured Lite version, Kinect-less, then I'll reconsider. Until then, it doesn't matter to me what the spec, bundle or price is.

[shaithis]

You can actually disconnect the kinect now with the newest firmware I believe and you get ~10% extra GPU performance due to releasing the streams it was reserving for kinect to work.

Although that still won't get me to buy one either! Future exclusives are underwhelming compared to PS4 and I can't even be bothered to buy one of those yet.

[Jowsey]

Personally, and I understand this may be a minority view, there are NO circumstances under which XBox One in current spec is going in my house. At an absolute minimum, I want to either completely disable Kinect cameras and/or microphones except when I positively want them, or better yet, a version with no Kinect in the first place. That's not my only issue, but it is a red line issue. And unlike Obama, my red lines really are make/break lines.

Without that, MS could offer me a completely free XBO, and every game I fancied, and I still wouldn't accept. So, personally, $50 certainly isn't going to change my mind.

If they do ever come up with the much-rumoured Lite version, Kinect-less, then I'll reconsider. Until then, it doesn't matter to me what the spec, bundle or price is.

FYI, you can purchase an Xbox One without a Kinect, and have been for a little while now. My flatmate has one, you lose a lot of the slickness in some functions but don't miss out on many actual features. Microsoft have made it so you need a kinect to use voice command features even if you have their (horrible) headset plugged in. (Seriously, I didn't think they could make the 360 headset feel cheaper but they've managed it!).

Outside of that though, it's not an great situation to be in. The machines (XBone & PS4) are largely comparable when the Xbone doesn't have the kinect on, the controller is a different shape and the exclusives vary but it's not ground breaking after that IMO. Small OS differences swing both ways if you ask me.

If microsoft want to discount the Xbone, and then Asda want to do a christmas bundle or whatever (my flatmate works for Asda and gets a flat 10% everything) then I may consider it. But I'm currently content with my computer.