Xbox One price "will never go back up", Pachter predicts
An Xbox One will probably retail for $349 from now on, according to industry analyst Michael Pachter.
The Xbox One price cut that kicked off in was originally scheduled to end in January, but after it tripled hardware sales, Microsoft it would extend the promotional price - giving no end date.
Speaking to GameInformer, Pachter said he doesn't expect that to change.
"On January 16 they said 'Effective tomorrow we have special promotional pricing of $349.' It didn't say temporary, and it didn't put a date of when it ends, which is really curious," Pachter said.
"It's not officially a price cut – it's promotional pricing. This allows the retailer to advertise regularly $399 and now it's $349, but I have a feeling it will never go back up."
On a related topic, Pachter said the Xbox One had trouble matching the PS4's sales in the early days thanks to Kinect.
"Kinect allowed players to voice control and motion control things, but most of us didn't need that. I don't need to say 'Xbox on,'" he said.
"I don't mind pressing a button on my controller – that's all you have to do. It's not that hard. It's actually harder to say 'Xbox on.'
"People weren’t buying the Xbox One and clearly a bunch of people migrated to PS4 from Xbox 360 because they didn’t want Kinect."
"The reason we have game controllers is because d-pads and analog sticks are an efficient way to control things on screen. It just makes sense and we get it; we don't need to go waving our hands around. Microsoft saw the success of the Wii and thought 'we're going to take that to the next level with voice and motion sensing,' and we didn't need that."
The Wedbush Morgan analyst went on to say hardcore gamers reacted badly to Xbox One's Kinect-centric approach, because they regretted buying Kinect the first time.
"People weren't buying the Xbox One and clearly a bunch of people migrated to PS4 from Xbox 360 because they didn't want Kinect," he added.
"So I think unbundling Kinect was the right idea. I'm not sure why Xbox didn't start outselling PlayStation right after they removed Kinect, because they didn't until they cut the price to $349 and started giving away free games."