Two weeks ago, Microsoft dropped the price of its Xbox One to as little as $299, fueling rumors that it was planning to unveil a new version of the console. Yesterday, at its E3 press conference, the company officially unveiled the new (and much smaller) Xbox One S - and now the price of its older console has fallen even further.
On the Xbox.com homepage today, there's now a banner showing a cropped image of the Xbox One and "new low price* $279". (The asterisk refers to small print such as "games and media content sold separately".)
The 'learn more' link goes through to a page where none of the consoles are currently listed at that lower price - but if you click on those that are listed at $299 on that page, you'll see that the price of some bundles has indeed been reduced to just $279:
This isn't entirely surprising; Microsoft announced that the Xbox One S Launch Edition, with a 2TB hard drive, will go on sale this summer priced at $399; the Microsoft Store currently states that it will be released on August 31. But it also said that two more affordable models - a 1TB version priced at $349, and a 500GB model for $299 - will go on sale later, so it makes sense that the older Xbox One would fall in price.
According to the small print on the Microsoft Store, the first-gen Xbox One will be available for $279 until October 1, but given its plan to launch the more capable 500GB Xbox One S for $299 - including HDR and 4K video support, along with a new controller - it's extremely unlikely that the older model will return to the higher price.
Indeed, if anything, it seems more likely that the original Xbox One's price will fall even further ahead of the holiday season.
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