The lights are on
Do you trade in or sell your games? If not, the Xbox One's still unclear restrictions on second-hand games might not bother you. Do you live in an area with blazing, stable Internet? If so, you might not be concerned about the 24-hour check-ins required by the Xbox One. Even if those two issues haven't deterred you, there's one last thing to consider: price.
Sure, Sony is taking a different road than Microsoft with regard to ownership, but the biggest piece of news was the price. The PlayStation 4 will be offered at $100 less than the $499 Xbox One. For those consumers that decide not to purchase the optional camera, that's a big difference.
Today, Xbox president of interactive entertainment Don Mattrick addressed the cost discrepancy. "We're over-delivering value against other choices," Mattrick said in a conversation with Bloomberg TV. "$499 isn't a ridiculous price point. We're delivering thousands of dollars of value to people."
The conversation moved on after that, and Mattrick didn't go into detail about where the additional value was being generated. It would be unsurprising to learn that the Xbox One manufacturing expenses are more than $499 per unit. Video game hardware is typically a loss leader, with licensing fees for software making up the difference over time. We'd be interested to hear more about the valuation, as Mattrick's "thousands of dollars" seems high.
What do you think, does the $100 price difference make you hesitate? How would you view the price if Microsoft were to drop the used game and online connection restrictions (something unlikely to happen)?
[Source: Bloomberg TV]
the multitude of reasons have certainly deterred me. im ps4 all the way
I'm definitely leaning toward Sony for this holiday. I have both the 360 and PS3, but play my 360 the vast majority of the time. The bells and whistles of the Xbox One just don't grasp me in any real way. They're nifty, yes, but that's about as far as my interest goes. I have reliable Internet so the check-ins don't bother me, but the used game restrictions certainly do. Borrowing and trading games is such a huge part of gamer culture that it's not something one can simply look past. After watching Sony's E3 conference, I knew I was more interested in the PS4. And that was before they had even announced the price. That pretty much sealed the deal for me. I still plan on getting the Xbox One, but not for at least a year after release. However, if MS were to lift the used game policy, it could tip the scales a bit.
Still buying it, though I would hate to borrow games...
Good grief, is Microsoft just convinced that we're bound by them to buy this thing? The artificial sense of drama surrounding next-gen's just getting annoying. Thousands of $$$ is a LOT to expect of anything short of a car in value, and if it's just about watching TV on the X-Box One, I've got news for Microsoft: I've already got a TV AND Netflix. Boohoo.
I think that Microsoft really needs to qualify that statement for anyone to think that it's even slightly valid.
No matter what microshit does, both gamers and casuals won't forget that Xbox One is and always will be the console that did more harm than good for microshit.
If Microsoft were to drop the whole used-games thing (which I do not think will happen for at least a couple years, if ever), I might have gotten the Xbox One - but definitely not right away.