Xbox One's price is back down to $299 just weeks before E3

Xbox One has received a price drop two weeks before E3, which probably says nothing about Microsoft's plans and we shouldn't read into it at all. Kidding. The Microsoft Store, GameStop, and other retailers now have several 500GB Xbox One bundles starting at $299, down from the $349, and several 1TB bundles for $319, way down from the old price point of $399.

The timing of the price drop lines up with reports that Microsoft plans to introduce some new Xbox One models in the near future. If Microsoft really is planning to release a slimmer version of Xbox One this year, it would make sense for it to start clearing out the old models. Then, by the time the extra-powerful unit reportedly codenamed Scorpio rolls out in 2017, the inventory would be narrowed down to a tidy two versions - the slim presumably sitting pretty at $299 and the Scorpio somewhere north of there.

The last time the official Xbox One price dropped to $299 was the 2015 holiday sale, but it returned to the standard $349 after that. We'll find out if Microsoft's up to anything more this time when the Xbox E3 conference begins at 9:30 am PDT / 5:30 pm BST on June 13.

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Connor Sheridan

I got a BA in journalism from Central Michigan University - though the best education I received there was from CM Life, its student-run newspaper. Long before that, I started pursuing my degree in video games by bugging my older brother to let me play Zelda on the Super Nintendo. I've previously been a news intern for GameSpot, a news writer for CVG, and now I'm a staff writer here at GamesRadar.