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Today on Microsoft’s stream of Inside Xbox, Microsoft unveiled the newest piece of hardware in the Xbox family. The Xbox One S All-Digital Edition. This new console removes the disc drive and comes with one terabyte of storage.
The objective of the console is to be an affordable alternative to the regular Xbox One S or high end Xbox One X. For those unfamiliar with either version of these console you can refer to their section in the 2019 Guide to buying a console for your kids.
The Xbox One S All-Digital Edition looks to be a fine console., I am not questioning that. It will run all Xbox games just as well as a regular Xbox one and it will do so at a lower cost, but I really feel like Microsoft has missed the mark by quite a bit here when it comes to pricing.
At $250 the value you get for skipping out on the disc drive doesn’t feel like a whole lot. The regular Xbox One S costs just $50 more at $300. I don’t think a $50 gap will give anyone much or a reason to pass up on a normal Xbox One for this newer, fewer featured version.
On the other side, I don’t think the $250 price tag is enough to convince people who may be on the fence about getting an Xbox, to go ahead and pull the trigger on a purchase.
Now if the Xbox One ADE, were very cheap, say, something like $150. I think you could get a lot of people picking one up as a side option. Xbox has so many great services like Game Pass and backward compatibility, that Microsoft probably could have moved a lot of units.
People may have been willing to grab one on the cheap. At $150 it could be seen as almost a beefed up streaming device. Something that could be a media hub while also offering a multitude of great games at very inexpensive prices.
Xbox One All-Digital Edition is a Missed Opportunity
Microsoft really had a chance to make some noise and pique some interest with a bargain bin type of price for this console. I think it would have been a move worth taking even if they took a little financial hit. As it stands, $250 feels like $100 too much in my eyes and going by initial reaction online, I think many would agree.
Now granted, one element that many seem to have missed is that Major Nelson said that even with sales, the Xbox One S ADE will always be $50 cheaper than the One S. So that means that if the One S is for sale at $250, the All Digital will be selling at $150.
When those scenarios come, and I am sure they will very soon, consumers will be getting a hell of a deal. But as mentioned in one of the tweets above, the optics of the initial price announcement are not good.
I think its a pretty poor way to put your best foot forward and Microsoft may have bumbled this one. $250 price tag on a 1 terabyte discless console doesn’t seem to excite anyone. But hey, maybe I am just overthinking this, after all, I’m not crunching the numbers behind the scenes.
What do you guys think? Is this price point exciting? Do you think Microsoft miss an opportunity? Share your thoughts.
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