News Microsoft cuts Xbox One RRP to under £300

I think enough time has now passed that the public are realising that the PS4 will have a bit more life in it than the Xbone, I know if I was looking for a console the PS4 would be my choice. I think its fair to say Sony has won with this round of consoles, MS will be playing catchup until the next generation which probably isn't that far away compared to the previous generation.

 

MS still paying the price for Don Mattricks dead end Kinnect obsession...

 

And the whole DRM issue, the initial pricing even once Kinect was binned, the poor exclusives, the lack of performance.

Looks and runs better on PS4 may as well be the first line of every multi platform review, now we're down the line a bit from launch that probably hurts them more than anything.

 

They need to focus on getting the basics right, which they've so far failed to do. It's only this month that users will be able to send voice messages! The new UI is a total joke, it's a glitchy slow unresponsive mess and especially when compared to the 360's.

Adding a propriety 'adapter' to use 3rd party headsets is another kick in the teeth.

But more importantly the exclusive quality titles just have not been there yet. I bought one at Christmas but so far have seen nothing 'next gen' to impress me. Hopefully this will change with Witcher 3, MGS etc.

 

At that price it's almost worth buying. Not for me but as a birthday present for my son.

 

seems desperate, and of cos i think it is just that. but i would not like to support a company thats so quick to flop over.

Now we all buy the MS product like this and they regain the lead and make millions again, who's to say they will not flop back now that they have all of us "slaves" to their platform.

granted you do what you need to to survive, but MS propaganda has always been about sticking to "whats best" and what they "believe in", so flip-flopping is very hypocritical and untrustworthy IMHO.

 

They're untrustworthy because they've realised that they NEED to lower the price in order to make it an alternative to the PS4? You become a "slave" to their platform? Uhm, no, you realise you are allowed to sell the console at any given time in your life; right?

My lord, some people come up with some **** in their spare time. LOL.

I've had an XBOX ONE since they were still pretty close to launch price. I paid £400 for mine, and honestly, I don't give two flying magical horse poos that it is the "worse" performer. The controller of the Sony system is enough to put me off. It's too small for people like me with gigantic gorilla hands, and that alone is reason enough to avoid it for me. I don't care if it is 10% more powerful, or that it has a built in PSU; who actually cares? It just sits behind a cabinet and it's out of the way.

 

Most people prefer the exclusives, Sony has these days. That's the big difference between the 2. Microsofts 2 big exclusives have always been Halo and Forza most relised there's better driving games and much better fps games available elsewhere.

I'd also say Sony has the only game that is actually must play in bloodborne. The dark souls game had a huge following it's true successor is ps4 exclusive does not help for Microsoft.

I do personally own both consoles and have done since launch.

 

the XBone easily had for £275 already new on amazon....

waiting till September, then ill grab a PS4 if a can, PS4 is £320 new on amazon atm so i guess by then it'll be around £300 or just under.

I have no interest in the xbone at all, inferior console in all aspects so why buy one unless you want its exclusives.

 

Microsoft seem to take a kicking no matter what they do. PC may have access to higher resolutions but many games actually run better on a console these days and that is down to the developers, not the power of the hardware. 'All things being equal' just doesn't apply to the gaming industry and it never has. I was very excited about the prospects of these new consoles with their 'closer to hardware' programmability and their PC based backbone but ultimately for me I have looked at the games that have come out and I haven't been impressed by a single thing. Gaming just doesn't have that 'WOW' factor it used to have with each new gen. <£300 may be a great price but there is no value for me as I see nothing I want to buy in to... PS4 or XBone.

 

My son seems happy enough with his.

I paid £319 for it, with Fifa 15 and an extra controller, before xmas last year - he didn't want the Kinnect, he didn't use his old one either. The RRP drop is fairly meaningless.

 

I know this is very much a personal preference thing, but I haven't been able to find a suitable FPS replacement to Halo yet.

The thing is, Halo sits in a fairly unique place that not many developers have dared to tread. It's in that classic arena area with large health pools, long kill times and high skill ceilings, but it also has a very meaningful campaign, story and characters.

IMO I think PC online FPS is crap simply thanks to the woeful online community. FPS games are inherently simple, point and shoot, as such they're easy to cheat in. I'm sick to death of CSGO and the issue of cheaters. I'm crap at it, I know that, but I shouldn't come across cheaters in 20-30% of the games I play, that's a pathetic number. Wall hacking, aim bots you name it, one guy was even advertising his cheat site in his tag. In comparison, I haven't encountered lots of console cheaters since the days of Halo 2. The control scheme for PC is much better, I know that, it's just a shame there are so many other issues.

A little bit of a derail there, just wanted to get my stance on PC online FPS out there. But you have to admit there's a distinct lack of story driven FPS out there, particularly for sci-fi. All too often they just turn into tech demos like the Crysis sequels. That's why Halo has a tender place in my gaming heart.

 

If that was actually anywhere near a real statistic nobody would be playing FPS games.

 

Except I'm not kidding, although maybe I should have said ranked games. I only have 10 ranked wins for this reason. That's not because they're making me lose, no that's me being bad, they've just disincentivised me from playing. I don't have my stats here with me, but I reckon I've played about 25 games of ranked, extrapolating from 10 wins. Of those 25 games I've experienced 5 games where I reported an opposition player after watching them in the replay. It's blatant when they're using a wall hack as their reticule follows you around the map.

Remember I'm playing at silver, people just don't care so cheat willy nilly. My much more talented friends have actually stopped and gone back to LoL as it's too frustrating for them. Just look on the CSGO subreddit, people complain about cheaters all the damn time. My anecdotal evidence clearly won't map perfectly to everybody else, but it's what I've experienced.

 

I've seen and know of more people that cheat on consoles than pc. I also remember playing against some friends that were testing hacks (for server admin purposes) and I managed to nail them most of the time. I very rarely see hackers on PC maybe it's just down to the servers.

Back on topic, I'm only interested in the PS4 getting a price reduction.

 

Lest We Forget.

 

Just seen it in Asda for £250 with a game and blueray movie.

 

And with kinect, you don't need hands. You just need masking tape and a highly trained parrot.

 

Microsoft arguably positioned the XBox One a bit poorly. The PS4 is a game console, nothing but the game console and only the game console. It focuses on what game consoles are supposed to do: run really pretty games really smoothly.

The XBox One tries to be a console and a media hub/centre. Except that it is not a good media centre, because it has no DVB tuner, and it has no built-in NAS. And it is not a great console because compromises were made to accommodate the additional cost of making it a not-quite media hub/centre.

Seriously, with al, the high-end gaming PC hardware out there you'd think it would be easy to build a quality XBox console for peanuts. Something which allows you to slot in a standard PC GPU card and standard HDD/SDD. Just all of the convenience and flexibility of a PC but none of the complications. Basically, a Steambox, only reasonably priced and good.

Add an revamped Windows Media Centre to the UI and an option to slot in a DVB tuner card, and away you go.