One of the oldest rivalries in gaming, the console war between PlayStation and Xbox, rages on as both systems are sticking to their holiday 2020 release schedule and trying to one-up each other with every public appearance. The team behind Xbox declared they are ready to beat their Japanese rivals with the price with a differential of up to $100.
Undercut thy neighbor
Xbox has huge plans and wants everyone to know. When the cancelation of this year’s E3 was announced, Microsoft was quick to jump with an announcement of a digital show and stated that this is just the first step in a series of announcements throughout the year.
Of course, they were right, as another big piece of news has been making headlines in the past day or two. In a podcast hosted by The Game Awards creator Geoff Keighley, Wedbush Securities analyst Michael Pachter, and Liverpool Football Club CEO Peter Moore (who's worked in Microsoft before), discussed Xbox’s pricing model and concluded that Microsoft was waiting for Sony to announce the price of their flashy new machine so they can undercut it by a significant margin, up to $100.
Not the only way to make money
Xbox is willing to sell consoles at a loss for a longer period of time but make it up in video game sales and subscriptions. This is a fairly standard industry practice when it comes to the big players, and shows that Microsoft has laid down a plan for a long period of time – most likely, this console generation’s entire life span.
What’s curious is that this is the exact reverse situation that we had with the release of the PS4 and Xbox One last generation, when Sony managed to be the console that costs $100 less.
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