Xbox One demand increased after price drop news, says GameStop president
Microsoft's Kinect-less Xbox One is $100 cheaper, which has raised demand according to GameStop president Tony Bartel.
Microsoft's recently announced Kinect-less Xbox One is also serving as a $100 price drop for the system, in a move that seems aimed at closing the remaining gap between it and PlayStation 4. That gambit appears likely to work, as GameStop recently noted it has seen increased interest in the console at its stores since the announcement.
"I definitely think we're already seeing in our stores [that] there's a stronger demand as a result of the price drop," GameStop president Tony Bartel said in an earnings call (via IGN). "The good news for us is... we'll sell a lot more units. And that means there will be more [Xbox One] units out there to put software on."
Xbox head Phil Spencer has said that offering a Kinect-free option was one part of his three-pronged approach to satisfy fan demands. The other two were bringing Games with Gold to Xbox One, and removing the Gold requirement for entertainment apps. All three were announced alongside the new Xbox model. The company hasn't abandoned Kinect entirely, though. Spencer mentioned that a standalone version will still be coming later, and marketing officer Yusuf Mehdi said that bundling Kinect was still "the right call" for the initial launch.
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Steve Watts posted a new article, Xbox One demand increased after price drop news, says GameStop president.
Microsoft's Kinect-less Xbox One is $100 cheaper, which has raised demand according to GameStop president Tony Bartel.-
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I already wasted $100 on a Kinect for my 360 and it's definitely not a selling point for the One for me. I also don't want the voice command stuff; if it the One actually provided some functionality -- like was a DVR or something -- I might be into it, but since it's just a dumb box that my DVR's running through, what's the point? I have a Harmony that controls everything else and I'm perfectly happy with it.
In addition, if the voice stuff on the One works anything like the voice crap on my 360, I'd want to turn that crap off anyway. When I used to use my 360 as my primary media device for Netflix, it'd constantly pause for no reason while something was playing. The random freezing stopped once I disconnected my Kinect.
It's a $100 noose around the Xbox One's neck afaic that's finally been untied.-
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Kinect demo'd really well in the store. Then you brought it home and tried to play games with it and realized it was frustrating as hell and pretty much impractical. It's a bug, not a feature.
I believe MS thought it was a game-changer when we saw it as just another gimmick like the Wiimote and were already over it.
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Are you pulling out the academic definition of demand here? You know what he meant.
"Demand" means "quantity demanded" in this instance. Of course he isn't referring to the economics definition of demand, since that is a graph of quantity demanded at every possible price and can only be shifted by non-price factors.-
It is not an academic question when you are discussing the impact of a price change. Price can change demand if it opens up distribution channels that didn't exist before (I guess you could say it reveals the true demand curve as well) and that is one of the most frequent reasons given for a request to decrease pricing but is incredibly rare in practice.
I'm guessing the coded message he is sending is that the elasticity multiplier is closer to 0 than Microsoft had hoped.-
Are you taking about the price elasticity of demand when you say "elasticity multiplier?" It's been a while since I've taken economics, but I never thought of PED as a multiplier.
There were also a few other changes that happened along with the price change that could have possibly shifted demand. The removal of the Xbox Live paywall and announcement of more details of the upcoming Games with Gold for Xbox One could have increased demand, however slightly.
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To drum up more demand. Today's market is heavily affected by public opinion and hype. If the undecided folks are browsing around the web and see an article like this saying how demand has risen for the Xbox One, then suddenly they want to buy one before stock runs out, even though they may not be sure why they want it in the first place.
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