Xbox One blew chances to overtake PS4 during holidays?
This was a thoroughly amusing read.
I'm not sure what the author truly thought was possible. Both consoles have been out for a little over 2-ish years now. If we look at Sony's 35.9M consoles and average that over 2 years we get an average of about 1.5M/month. And, the actual average at the moment would be much lower than that. Even with the holidays. The biggest averages would have been in the months following the launch.
Why is this important? Because saying that Microsoft is still at a 2:1 disadvantage and calling that "blowing it" is just hilariously useless. There was never any chance that Microsoft could, in a single sales season, made considerable headway. Certainly not enough that anyone would saying anything but that Sony has a 2:1 lead.
Had they doubled or even tripled Sony's own sales for the holiday quarter most people would still just round it down to a 2:1 lead for Sony.
Sony's lead wasn't built in a month or even a quarter. It was built over two years and began in the fastest growing period of sales.
At this point in the console wars it is really more about staying relevant. The truth is, while people view the PS4 more highly than the Xbox One, pretty much everyone still concedes it is truly a next (or I suppose now 'current') gen console. It also has its share of exclusives and a different experience. Realistically, the market for new PS4's will dry up and many gamers will end up with both at one point or another and the rest of the market will be largely split between the two.
I would predict that in the end (when the next gen is unveiled) Sony will likely still be on top, but that the gap will be MUCH closer to 1:1.
Frankly, Sony's lead is unsustainable. The Xbox One is a good machine, whether it is better or worse than the PS4. And I would also say that this year is actually more likely to do the console good than bad regardless of how they fared this year. And the reasons there are easy to understand. Firstly, look at the list of PS4 exclusives for 2016. It is largely just new franchise installments. Xbox One has titles like Recore and Scalebound which are new IP. If one of those is a smash hit it will be more valuable to the Xbox One than any incremental franchise boost.
And, lets not pretend that the Xbox One doesn't have its share existing franchise titles. Including Crackdown 3, which while not wholly new, does bring something exciting and new to the console in terms of the scale of destruction leveraging cloud computing. Then there are also new Gears Of War, Fable and Halo related franchise releases. Fable Legends will be the first Fable release and is a whole new game concept as well, being free to play.
Everything is subjective when it comes to desirability of exclusive game titles, but I think that the 2016 lineup for the Xbox One is not only better than the PS4's, I also think it puts their own 2015 lineup to shame.
The next point is that AMD hinted that consoles should have some room to cut costs going forward. Price cuts here will help Xbox One more than PS4 as the PS4 is closer to market saturation and a lot of people looking to pick up a second platform generally wait until the first hardware refresh.
All things considered, I not only don't think that the Xbox One didn't blow it this holiday by any means, but I also don't think that their performance relative to the PS4 will have much of an effect this year. And, I think THIS is the year for the Xbox One.
Launch year was all about how gamers felt about consoles and Sony definitely held the upper hand there. Neither really had any releases in the second year that would sway someone on the fence, so Sony maintained the upper hand thanks to a larger share and better momentum.
We're finally seeing some exciting, brand new, premium exclusives this year. And may see either a price cut or re-vamped console. This is the first year in which I feel any reason to think the gap could start shrinking noticeably.
That being said, if this year is a runaway success for Microsoft, it is still pretty much impossible that they will actually surpass Sony in terms of total sales. And once again, not doing so won't be a failure. To put it simply, if Sony somehow sold zero consoles in 2016 and Microsoft sold twice as many in 1 as they did in their opening 2 years they would only just be on pace to tie Sony. And neither of those is realistic on their own. Microsoft won't sell 18M consoles in 2016 (Sony is unlikely to do so either) and Sony certainly isn't going to sell 0 PS4s.
I DO think Microsoft will sell more consoles in 2016 than Sony. Largely, I think Sony saturated their market quickly. Microsoft's brand image is recovering slowly, they have the most room to grow, they have exciting new exclusives and they are already less expensive than the PS4.
I don't think this should reflect bad on either Sony. More than likely history will remember Sony as the winner of this console generation.
I'm not sure what the author truly thought was possible. Both consoles have been out for a little over 2-ish years now. If we look at Sony's 35.9M consoles and average that over 2 years we get an average of about 1.5M/month. And, the actual average at the moment would be much lower than that. Even with the holidays. The biggest averages would have been in the months following the launch.
Why is this important? Because saying that Microsoft is still at a 2:1 disadvantage and calling that "blowing it" is just hilariously useless. There was never any chance that Microsoft could, in a single sales season, made considerable headway. Certainly not enough that anyone would saying anything but that Sony has a 2:1 lead.
Had they doubled or even tripled Sony's own sales for the holiday quarter most people would still just round it down to a 2:1 lead for Sony.
Sony's lead wasn't built in a month or even a quarter. It was built over two years and began in the fastest growing period of sales.
At this point in the console wars it is really more about staying relevant. The truth is, while people view the PS4 more highly than the Xbox One, pretty much everyone still concedes it is truly a next (or I suppose now 'current') gen console. It also has its share of exclusives and a different experience. Realistically, the market for new PS4's will dry up and many gamers will end up with both at one point or another and the rest of the market will be largely split between the two.
I would predict that in the end (when the next gen is unveiled) Sony will likely still be on top, but that the gap will be MUCH closer to 1:1.
Frankly, Sony's lead is unsustainable. The Xbox One is a good machine, whether it is better or worse than the PS4. And I would also say that this year is actually more likely to do the console good than bad regardless of how they fared this year. And the reasons there are easy to understand. Firstly, look at the list of PS4 exclusives for 2016. It is largely just new franchise installments. Xbox One has titles like Recore and Scalebound which are new IP. If one of those is a smash hit it will be more valuable to the Xbox One than any incremental franchise boost.
And, lets not pretend that the Xbox One doesn't have its share existing franchise titles. Including Crackdown 3, which while not wholly new, does bring something exciting and new to the console in terms of the scale of destruction leveraging cloud computing. Then there are also new Gears Of War, Fable and Halo related franchise releases. Fable Legends will be the first Fable release and is a whole new game concept as well, being free to play.
Everything is subjective when it comes to desirability of exclusive game titles, but I think that the 2016 lineup for the Xbox One is not only better than the PS4's, I also think it puts their own 2015 lineup to shame.
The next point is that AMD hinted that consoles should have some room to cut costs going forward. Price cuts here will help Xbox One more than PS4 as the PS4 is closer to market saturation and a lot of people looking to pick up a second platform generally wait until the first hardware refresh.
All things considered, I not only don't think that the Xbox One didn't blow it this holiday by any means, but I also don't think that their performance relative to the PS4 will have much of an effect this year. And, I think THIS is the year for the Xbox One.
Launch year was all about how gamers felt about consoles and Sony definitely held the upper hand there. Neither really had any releases in the second year that would sway someone on the fence, so Sony maintained the upper hand thanks to a larger share and better momentum.
We're finally seeing some exciting, brand new, premium exclusives this year. And may see either a price cut or re-vamped console. This is the first year in which I feel any reason to think the gap could start shrinking noticeably.
That being said, if this year is a runaway success for Microsoft, it is still pretty much impossible that they will actually surpass Sony in terms of total sales. And once again, not doing so won't be a failure. To put it simply, if Sony somehow sold zero consoles in 2016 and Microsoft sold twice as many in 1 as they did in their opening 2 years they would only just be on pace to tie Sony. And neither of those is realistic on their own. Microsoft won't sell 18M consoles in 2016 (Sony is unlikely to do so either) and Sony certainly isn't going to sell 0 PS4s.
I DO think Microsoft will sell more consoles in 2016 than Sony. Largely, I think Sony saturated their market quickly. Microsoft's brand image is recovering slowly, they have the most room to grow, they have exciting new exclusives and they are already less expensive than the PS4.
I don't think this should reflect bad on either Sony. More than likely history will remember Sony as the winner of this console generation.
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