Rumors say the Xbox One will cost $650 in China, and the internet explodes

At this point, there have been so many rumors about the Xbox One’s price in China that virtually any number Microsoft announces will prove that one of them was true. But the latest one is that the Kinect-enabled version of the console will be priced at RMB 3999 (about $650), according to images that show a preorder page with that price on the Chinese e-commerce site Jingdong.

The image of the console priced at 3999 RMB on Jingdong.

Jingdong’s live site, however, doesn’t contain that page, with the Xbox One price listed as “temporarily without a price.” Whether the image above comes from a page that was uploaded prematurely or one that was fabricated by trolls is unclear.

What is clear, though, is that Chinese gamers aren’t impressed by that price at all. A reader poll conducted on Netease Games found that of the nearly 10,000 respondents, only 2.4% could accept the device being priced so high. And the comments on an article about the rumors has already attracted more than 2,000 comments, most of them negative. Among the most popular comments:

Wuhan user:

3599 RMB and including three games free or don’t even bother selling it. The [gray market imported console] sellers on Taobao are looking at your 3999 RMB price and laughing silently.

Langfang user:

Poor PC gamer passing through: [for that price you could get] a good video card, an Xbox One controller, and a big heap of pirated games.

Wuxi user:

Even at 2000 RMB I wouldn’t buy it, what advantage does it have over the PS4?

The other popular sentiment was that this rumor is some kind of trick; either a promotional stunt orchestrated by Jingdong to remind people the console will be available there, or a test by Microsoft to see what the popular reaction to the price is. If it’s the latter, I think Microsoft has its answer: people hate it.