Microsoft announces Xbox One bundle with 'Titanfall' for $499

[Shawn Knight]

The Xbox One is only a few months old at this point but that isn’t stopping Microsoft from issuing the console’s first price cut. Well, sort of. Gamers around the world will soon be able to purchase the next generation system for $499.99 with a free game in an effort to better compete with Sony’s more affordable PlayStation 4.

Microsoft will be bundling Titanfall with the $499.99 Xbox One. The special edition bundle includes a digital copy of the game and a one month Xbox Live Gold membership in addition to the standard issue console, Kinect, wireless controller and chat headset. It's still more expensive than the PS4 but you're basically getting a free game now.

Harvey Eagle, Xbox's marketing director in the UK, said the reason they were doing this is because they are committed to giving gamers the best value possible. He added that we are only a few months into a generation of consoles that are going to last for many years to come and now just feels like the right time to make the adjustment on the price.

Despite the fact that the Xbox One has enjoyed record-breaking success and has outsold the Xbox 360 by a wide margin during the same time period, the truth of the matter is that Microsoft’s machine is lagging far behind in sales compared to the PS4. According to at least one report, sales of Sony’s console were nearly double those of the Xbox One in January.

Permalink to story.

https://www.techspot.com/news/55787-microsoft-announces-xbox-one-bundle-with-titanfall-for-499.html

 

[wastedkill]

Next we will see PS4 Bundle for $299

 

[treeski]

The Titanfall beta was a lot of fun. On-the-ground vs in-a-titan gameplay is pretty balanced. Devs should probably do something to increase the Titan fun, but it's a really solid game overall.

 

[Adhmuz]

Nothing spectacular here, Microsoft did pay for launch exclusivity. Too bad it's just a digital download, not even a hard copy, something likely to be done for all package games in the future. Paid for launch exclusivity, something that just shouldn't exist, taking the competition away from the competition the best way Microsoft knows how.

 

[wastedkill]

Nothing spectacular here, Microsoft did pay for launch exclusivity. Too bad it's just a digital download, not even a hard copy, something likely to be done for all package games in the future. Paid for launch exclusivity, something that just shouldn't exist, taking the competition away from the competition the best way Microsoft knows how.

Then microsoft will have to pay the ISP's to stop throtteling their connections LOL

 

[Guest]

One? Seven houndred twenty !!!

 

[Brodo Laggins]

"Harvey Eagle, Xbox's marketing director in the UK, said the reason they were doing this is because they are committed to giving gamers the best value possible."

Reaaalllyy? Tell me more. Then why not offer something of this value before?

 

[project_Akira]

I will just go on and hold on to my Day One edition

 

[Saintnsinner]

What a slap in the face to the people who invested in a day one edition. I still think they should have just dropped the kinect and matched sonys price. But I see the kinect 2 is going for around a hundred bucks on ebay anyways. I'm tempted to buy this bundle and sell the kinect on ebay but then again Titanfall is going to be available on Xbox 360 so why spend the money with so few games out. Plus it might be smarter to wait and see what else Microsoft does to compete with sony.

 

[Gamesinner]

Next we will see PS4 Bundle for $299

Dude, I'd be all over that like a fat kid on a cupcake!

 

[Guest]

Buy it on PC. It'll be on sale eventually on Origin or some other digital streaming website, except for Steam, really cheap in a couple of months anyway.

 

[gamoniac]

"Harvey Eagle, Xbox's marketing director in the UK, said the reason they were doing this is because they are committed to giving gamers the best value possible."

Reaaalllyy? Tell me more. Then why not offer something of this value before?

Base on your statement, vendors should never lower their prices then? Device and gadget prices fall all the time. Apple dropped iPhone price by $200 within two months in 2007. My new video card price dropped by $50 within 4 months as well. Early adaptors are, well, early adopters. They expect to pay a premium for bragging rights and for being impatient.

 

[Brodo Laggins]

Base on your statement, vendors should never lower their prices then? Device and gadget prices fall all the time. Apple dropped iPhone price by $200 within two months in 2007. My new video card price dropped by $50 within 4 months as well. Early adaptors are, well, early adopters. They expect to pay a premium for bragging rights and for being impatient.

Haha of course not... but they can't be purely committed to giving the best value if they weren't giving the best value before. They're reacting to market pressure and claiming otherwise.

 

[GhostRyder]

I like how 90% of the people talking about this are not talking about the bundle and are instead talking about how Sony is "better" for (insert reason here). Early adopters like myselft whether on PS4 or Xbox ONE are paying for day 1 stuff on the consoles, its what we want. The bundle being digital download saves money to Microsoft and its a future we are going to face one way or another on both ends of the spectrum because you don't have to pay for a Blu-Ray and Box to be put inside the console.

To all the people who keep on ranting about "Sony will do this for (Insert price here)" or "Sony will do a better job later" please keep telling everyone that. If you don't like one console, you buy the other for whatever your reason is. If you don't like either console, you buy a PC and play PC games. Both consoles have just launched but the facts are that Microsoft has been making more exclusives at launch and around the whole console along with the multi-platform games while offering more features and the Kinect standard which is more than Sony has done. I have both, I could not care less which does better because ill grab an exclusive for whatever console they come out on but the facts are the facts.

If you add in the free game and the Kinect, that puts Microsofts "Value" on par with the PS4 then.

 

[Guest]

Haha of course not... but they can't be purely committed to giving the best value if they weren't giving the best value before. They're reacting to market pressure and claiming otherwise.

They could have just said "We want to give even more people a chance to experience the Xbox one. And we are committed to doing so"

Giving a statement of Value is always misleading for a for-profit company. Not that I have anything against them making money. I personally want to see Xbox out sell PS4 for no other reason than that it is an American based company. Sad to see them losing the battle.

 

[wastedkill]

Coming up: Microsoft paying $31.8Billion to all Major UK & US ISP's to stop them from throttling users connections when using Xbox One.

 

[Gamesinner]

I really wonder how much money Microsoft paid to keep Titanfall off the PS3 and PS4? To think a company would pay millions of dollars to keep a game off the competitions consoles. To me that doesn't show a lot of confidence in your own console. Depending on how much was paid you have to do some simple math to see how crazy this is. There are roughly 80 million PS3s and 5.6 million PS4s that have been sold so far. If EA pockets 5 bucks from every sale of Titanfall and let's just say 30 million Titanfall games sell on the PS3 and PS4 platform that's 150 million. Without being an expert I think that's a relatively conservative estimate. They better have received way more than 150 million form Microsoft for the exclusive deal or else EA just screwed the pooch. Of course it was guaranteed money versus taking a risk.