Even with Low Presence of Xbox One in India, New Games are Priced High. Pre-Orders are at Rs 4,699

Lets get one thing straight, Xbox One has a terribly low presence in India when compared to PS4. Yes, Microsoft did announce backward compatibility for Xbox 360, but they already lost a huge market by announcing the console prices ridiculously high, during the launch, only to keep them dropping now and then.

So in a situation like this, how do you price that games? Even higher. Thats what seems to be happening with recently announced Xbox One games, Halo 5 : Guardians, Rise of Tomb Raider and Forza Motorsport 6 which are up for pre-order on Amazon India at a crazy price of Rs 4,699. And No, they aren’t exclusive editions, but standard ones.

Now, Rishi aka @SlackerNinja, reports at NDTV Gadgets, that when they asked Microsoft comment on this abnormally high pre-order price this is what they said:

“Every game has its individual pricing. This is an estimated retail price for Halo 5,” a representative from Microsoft explained when we discovered the abnormally high pre-order price for Microsoft’s hotly anticipated first-person shooter.

This is odd considering they’re all uniformly priced on Amazon via its merchant arm, Cloudtail. It also begs the question, what if the “estimated price” drops after someone pre-orders?

Why drop the price after putting them on billboard? Why miss a chance to increase Xbox One presence? Why can’t someone get the pricing right in first shot? Why experiment with pricing when market presence is already low?

Well, the PS4 pricing aren’t going to be super cheap either, but it’s not a 1:1 competition right now, at least not in India. If Microsoft needs to increase the user base for Xbox One, IMO, they need to come out with better pricing model.

So should you buy the game right away? I would say wait. After release, you will see the price fluctuations, offers and Amazon pushing hard to sell of the games at a price which might save you bit of fortune.