*a complete 180 and a fire sale to change it yes
Only after a complete reverse on policy, removal of kinect and the price drop and game inclusion did it really take off which is great but should've been all that from the get go
If it's this doable imo or at least how it should be going forward
Before November, the cheapest you could buy a Kinect-free SKU for was $399. On Black Friday (not even the whole month), if you waited in line you could buy a Kinect-free sku for was $329. Most people paid $349. Not everybody wants the pack-in games, and certainly not everybody values them at anywhere near the MSRP of said games. And what Microsoft pays to bundle those games in is way, way below MSRP, and even well less than wholesale.
So we're looking at the cost of the lowest price of entry to X1 ownership dropping from between
12% and 18% less than what it was last summer.
As far as the Kinect SKU? Price of entry dropped from $499 to $429 for the holidays. That's a
14% price drop, again, not counting the Ass Creed pack in.
In May 2002, Sony and Microsoft made a permanent price cut of
33% for their respective consoles.
That was no fire sale in 2002, and there's no fire sale now. It's the cost of doing business in the competitive landscape, and these discounts AREN'T EVEN THAT BIG.
I remember the Dreamcast fire sale (Black Friday 2001). Got an extra console for $50 and a bunch of extra games for $5-$10.
The terms
fire sale and
pyrrhic victory are being tossed around a lot in this thread; these terms do not mean what you think they mean.