Microsoft announced today that when purchasing select Xbox One S or Xbox One X bundles on Amazon you will now receive an Amazon Echo Dot free of charge. The Echo Dot has just been refreshed by Amazon and usually retails for $49.99 so this is a great deal for anyone who has or hasn’t yet bought into Amazon’s smart home ecosystem.
This deal has likely been reached with Amazon to show off Xbox’s new Alexa features that launched in this month’s Xbox update. You can now ask Alexa to turn your Xbox on or off, play games, and everything else that you would usually need to ask Cortana to do on Xbox One.
It would appear for now the deal is limited to NBA 2K19 bundles of the Xbox One which doesn’t appeal to me personally because I’ve never been into the iterative nature of sports games and I have heard a lot of bad things about the micro-transactions in the NBA series.
I wrote not too long ago that Microsoft should have launched Xbox One S with a mic built in for voice commands, and if you’d like to check that article out click here. This really makes up for that lack of including a microphone in the console’s hardware originally but it’s not enough to convince me until it comes with a game I actually want. I already have an Xbox One S with FIFA 17 because the day I happened to buy it in GameStop their only options were FIFA or Minecraft, which I already owned.
If you want to buy this bundle it’s only available while supplies last and hopefully Microsoft or Amazon will bring it to other bundles as well, perhaps Fallout 76 or Forza Horizon 4. What do you think of this idea? Is it enough to make you splurge on a new Xbox One X or try out the Xbox One S if you’re on team PlayStation? We’d love to hear from you in the comments below.