Xbox One will cost $499 / £429 at launch in November, but the cost of entry is too high, economist and author Rafi Mohammed has cautioned. He has stressed that a low console cost would result in more players investing in Xbox One games in a new interview.


Mohammed has worked as a pricing analyst for some 21 years and is author of a book called The Art of Pricing. If there’s one thing he appears to know, it’s how to price a product successfully.

Speaking with Bloomberg TV, Mohammed said of Xbox One, “You want to get that console in consumers’ hands, and then where you really make the money is off of the games.

“So it was really surprising that they charged such a premium, especially when they had a lot of negatives…like the very restrictive DRM, which they did retract from. One of the key things is that they really listened to their consumers and they did backtrack and they reduced the price, but I still think the price is too high. So it’s still a $100 premium.”

Despite the $499 asking price, Microsoft’s Don Mattrick has recently suggested that Xbox One over-delivers on value, and offers thousands of dollars worth of content and features. We’re still not sure what ‘over-delivering on value’ means exactly.