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Those who’ve kept up to date on gaming news in recent years have undoubtedly been subject to one or more of Wedbrush Securities analyst Michael Pachter’s predictions.
Those who’ve kept up to date on gaming news in recent years have undoubtedly been subject to one or more of Wedbrush Securities analyst Michael Pachter’s predictions. One of the more recent claims from Pachter is that the PS4 will outsell Xbox One by 66%, but he also believes that Sony’s forthcoming PlayStation Now service is a “joke.”
With that in mind, it’s not surprising to hear that the vocal and heavily publicized analyst is at it again, but this time he believes that Microsoft will make some notable changes to its current Xbox One SKU.
In the latest edition of Bonus Round , Pachter laid down a prediction that Microsoft will be ditching the mandatory camera peripheral in favor of a Kinect-less Xbox One bundle. This speculation, while a move that’s been heavily requested by gamers for quite some time, does make a lot of sense for Microsoft, and Pachter points to the current price point of the hardware as incentive enough to remove Kinect as a mandatory feature.
“I think this is a price game. I think unbundling Kinect is the smartest way to get competitive right away.”
“Just the way they introduced the 4 GB Xbox after a couple years, they’ll bring one out and it’ll be something that’ll look a little dumbed down… I think they’ll actually pick the core model and put a 2 TB hard drive in it, and then the dumbed down one will have a 500 GB hard drive, and it’ll have no Kinect, and it’ll be 400 bucks. That’s the easiest way to do the price cut. The problem is that if by spring ’15 they cut the price to $400, Sony goes 349 for ours! Sony right now is in a position to stay ahead of them, and this is what happened with the PS2. PS2 kept taking share by cutting price.”
Since Sony launched the PlayStation 4 $100 cheaper than the Xbox One, it’s not overly surprising to hear that the PS4 has taken the lead with a whopping 6 million sold within four months. In order to remain competitive, Microsoft will have to do more than package Titanfall with the Xbox One to make it fly off store shelves. Dropping mandatory Kinect support opens up the console to a price drop, which could put it on par with the cost of Sony’s latest hardware.
As Pachter points out, however, Sony could then very well undercut Microsoft in price again — allowing the PS4 to remain the cheaper console. It’s still too soon to determine which console will win the war, but removing Kinect from the Xbox One bundle is a viable option to lower the price.
Do you think Microsoft should remove Kinect from the Xbox One bundle? Would you pick up the console if it was $100 cheaper?
Follow Riley on Twitter @ TheRileyLittle.
Source: DualShockers