With the festive season raining amazing offers and discounts upon us, Microsoft too has jumped on the bandwagon to offer some incredible deals with respect to the Xbox 360. We spoke to Anshu Mor, Business Group Lead – Interactive Entertainment Business, Microsoft India, who essentially takes care of everything Xbox 360 related in India. He let us in on all the deals that the company will be offering to those buying a new console this festive season.
The first deal is on the Xbox 360 Kinect (4GB) bundle, which comes with a copy of Kinect Adventures in the box. However, to sweeten the deal Microsoft will be offering two unique SKUs. One SKU will include the 4GB Xbox 360 along with a Kinect sensor and while Kinect Adventures will come standard, Microsoft will also throw in two additional games; Fruit Ninja and Forza. The other SKU will also include Kinect Adventures, but the other two games would be Disney Adventures and Your Shape Fitness Evolved. The goodies don’t stop there though. We are told that come October 12th (the bundles might take a few days to percolate to every store), each of these SKUs will also come with FIFA 2014 bundled.
The second offer will be running on the 250GB variant of the console. The Xbox 360 250GB Core Bundle (without Kinect) will come with a copy of Darksiders 2 in the box and download tokens for Batman Arkham City, Halo 3 and Gears of War 3. In case you’re wondering, these are all full games. The second variant, the Xbox 360 250GB Kinect bundle will come with Kinect Adventures, Kinect Sports 1, Dance Central and Minecraft.
When we asked why Microsoft was not offering discounted prices on their bundles this season, Anshu Mor said that due to the fluctuations in the dollar price, it has become difficult to offer discounted prices. However, bundling games essentially comes down to the same thing as anyone who buys a new console would want to pick up a few games to start off with. The bundled games help save on that cost, which can be anywhere between Rs. 3,000 to Rs.7,000.
We brought up the topic of Xbox Live with Mor and he told us that the service has seen its subscription base double in the last 12-18 months, with 65% of the console owners being “connected.” By that, he meant that 65% of all the people who own an Xbox have it connected to the Internet, either through Xbox Live Gold or even through a basic Xbox Live subscription, which is a rather large jump from the figures from last year. He said that “going forward, things will only get better for Xbox Live Gold subscribers in India.” When asked if he was referring to local content, he said that while there is no set time line, they are working on bringing localized content to the Xbox 360. To start with, the efforts are focused on Bollywood films.
Lastly, we inquired if the US launch of the Xbox One would result in the Xbox 360 not getting any love, but Mor was quick to put that worry to rest. He said that Microsoft plans to support the Xbox 360 as a standalone product in the same manner as they have up until now, so anyone who has a console or plans to buy one should not worry about the console suddenly becoming obsolete.