Microsoft lowers Xbox One’s entry price to $299

In a surprise move ahead of next month’s Electronic Entertainment Expo, Microsoft has lowered the price on almost all of its Xbox One bundles by $50. That means you can now get a 500GB Xbox One bundled with either Quantum Break, Gears of War: Ultimate Edition, The Lego Movie Videogame,Forza Motorsport 6, Rise of the Tomb Raider, or Rare Replay for just $299. Systems with a 1TB hard drive and other bundled games range from $319 to $349.

A system with a Kinect camera and three compatible games is now $349, while one with an Elite controller and a 1TB hard drive is $449.

While the prices are listed as “for a limited time” on the Microsoft website, other online retailers seem to be matching the sudden, platform-wide price drop. The Xbox One previously dropped to $299 as part of some holiday season deals in 2015 and again as part of a Microsoft Store promotion in March.

Back in 2014, some retailers temporarily lowered the price of the Xbox One to $449 before Microsoft officially lowered the price to $399 by pulling Kinect out of the bundle and then to $349 by the 2014 holiday season. The PlayStation 4 also dropped to $349 last October and wasbriefly available for $299 during the 2015 holiday season.

This latest price reduction comes as Microsoft is widely rumored to be planning the announcement of a new, smaller, and possibly cheaper Xbox One at E3, along with a more powerful, VR-capable edition of the console set for 2017. Making the old, “outdated” version of the console a bit cheaper would certainly be a good way to soften the ground for those announcements, even if the evidence is still circumstantial at the moment.