How to sell next-gen consoles, Marketing, Positioning, and Pricing [2020]

The doom and gloom about MS in this thread makes me laugh.

I'm getting an XSX on launch day for one simple reason - It's the best box to play Cyberpunk 2077 and I know that MS has Halo, Forza, Gears, Fable etc... on the way. Who cares about a particular game at launch? Not me.

My oldest son and his friends just care about the latest Call of Duty, Apex, Battlefield etc... They'll just buy the best box (XSX) for those games. None of these guys care about Sony or MS 1st party. At least MS has a chance of getting them interested if Halo or Gears turn out well. These guys would rather watch paint dry than play something like The Last of Us. LOL

People overestimate the value of some 1st party titles in driving sales.

The people I talk to:

1) Does it have Call of Duty?
2) Is it powerful?
3) What are my friends getting?

We're not 18 any more. People have jobs now. $500 is "whatever" to every single person I know, even my underemployed 23 year old son.

We're living in a world where high school kids are walking around with $500 phones in their pocket and spending their money on dance moves in Fortnite (well not on iPhone, LOL).

Launch is all about early adopters. Most of the guys I mentioned above probably won't bother getting their XSX until 2021. MS and Sony will sell everything they can produce this year if they sell at $499, and maybe even $599.

10% of the userbases have the money and want these things NOW!

It makes for great click bait, but only 1 in 10 Xbox gamers even bought Halo 5, so most people either understand or don't care that Halo was delayed.

Well said, it's the reality outside of gaming forums like this one. You usually don't buy consoles for a couple of games over a seven year life span.
 
We talking up up down down left right left right a b select start?

Shit. 399 for DE is solid. But to borrow games I need a disc drive! 499 is okay!
 
Pretty sure he's saying that 400 for the S won't work, it needs to be at least 100 less than the current X.

I appreciate it might not be available, I'm just interested to understand why he thinks this way...I can understand the question 'is it worth upgrading my XBX for XSS?' and where that cost sits (ie I'd sell my X and only have to pay 100 to upgrade)...but if you walk into a shop and are presented with both options then what makes someone think the new XSS needs to be cheaper than the old XBX?

Went away for a day and was surprised to see the amount of discussion that went into my post.

Let me talk through my train of thought.

since most games will remain cross generation for the Xbox lineup for quite some time, a person that's going to buy a Xbox Series S already has the choicce of buying a Xbox One X for around two full years.

In terms of performance, they will most likely be "comparable".
Yes the Series S will have some more features, but they ultimately are performing in the same realm.

If these two consoles are priced similarly, any potential Xbox Series S buyer will have more often than not bought a Xbox One X. Considering how many people have actually bought a Xbox One X, (which isn't a large subset of gamers) Microsoft will have a hard time living off that small subset.
Making matters worse, the people that have already bought an Xbox One X will more likely than not gear themselves toward buying a Xbox Series X, further fragmenting the potential target group.

Right now the pricing should be in the realm below
Xbox One S sells for ~ $250,
Xbox one X sells for ~$400

What I'm saying is that if the Series S sells for 400, that is basically committing suicide.
$300 I can see it working to some degree. 400 no.

Not sure why this is a hard idea to grasp. Humans are good at making relative choices, not absolute choices. The Xbox One X that is currently selling for 400 is effectively making a ceiling for the Series S.
 
Went away for a day and was surprised to see the amount of discussion that went into my post.

Let me talk through my train of thought.

since most games will remain cross generation for the Xbox lineup for quite some time, a person that's going to buy a Xbox Series S already has the choicce of buying a Xbox One X for around two full years.

In terms of performance, they will most likely be "comparable".
Yes the Series S will have some more features, but they ultimately are performing in the same realm.

If these two consoles are priced similarly, any potential Xbox Series S buyer will have more often than not bought a Xbox One X. Considering how many people have actually bought a Xbox One X, (which isn't a large subset of gamers) Microsoft will have a hard time living off that small subset.
Making matters worse, the people that have already bought an Xbox One X will more likely than not gear themselves toward buying a Xbox Series X, further fragmenting the potential target group.

Right now the pricing should be in the realm below
Xbox One S sells for ~ $250,
Xbox one X sells for ~$400

What I'm saying is that if the Series S sells for 400, that is basically committing suicide.
$300 I can see it working to some degree. 400 no.

Not sure why this is a hard idea to grasp. Humans are good at making relative choices, not absolute choices. The Xbox One X that is currently selling for 400 is effectively making a ceiling for the Series S.
I’m confused, if the performance is comparable (as you suggest) but the XSX has RT and super fast loading- why does it need to be cheaper again?
 
Allegedly their guidance is develop for Series X first and then fine-tune on LockHart platform.

Allegedly? But most devs are going to aim for the largest audience. And that's not going to be the Series X. Why make life harder for themselves?

They need to kick their marketing up the ass and get it working, show some actual gameplay. Just one game would help (as long as it's not Halo). Unless they are content on coming last place in the market again?
 
Allegedly? But most devs are going to aim for the largest audience. And that's not going to be the Series X. Why make life harder for themselves?

They need to kick their marketing up the ass and get it working, show some actual gameplay. Just one game would help (as long as it's not Halo). Unless they are content on coming last place in the market again?
The latter is unavoidable.
The question is whether they can improve on their last outing (XBO gen). I think they can and will likely do better this coming gen over last.

They have 4 games released this month? None of which showcase the power of XSX. They will be relying on 3P to do this
 
Allegedly? But most devs are going to aim for the largest audience. And that's not going to be the Series X. Why make life harder for themselves?

They need to kick their marketing up the ass and get it working, show some actual gameplay. Just one game would help (as long as it's not Halo). Unless they are content on coming last place in the market again?

I think he means downscaling from seriex x downwards. An example is on pc, DICE's BFV takes advantage of a 2080Ti setup down to much and much weaker hardware then that. It's not only resolution and framerate, there's from ultra to low ray tracing, and other settings.
Scaled upwards? maybe, it doesn't really matter i think, BFV for example on lowest without raytracing at a unstable fps all the way to 4k60 ray tracing ultra settings is a complete different experience.

If that difference does exist going from a one s/series s to a XSX, the box is justified to exist and appealing enough to buy over a three times lower powered console. In special considering most games will be cross-plat games.

On to the latter, that's kinda hard for MS to match Sony there, because Sony doesnt do cross gen and focusses on PS5 only games from the get go (first party studios).
 
There is a huge difference between building a game for a minimum denominator that still has a Ryzen CPU, RDNA2 GPU and a fast SSD - and building it for current gen consoles.

Scaling up from the XSS would lead to much better results all round, than trying to build the same game to run on PS4/One, and then 'scale up'.
 
There is a huge difference between building a game for a minimum denominator that still has a Ryzen CPU, RDNA2 GPU and a fast SSD - and building it for current gen consoles.

Scaling up from the XSS would lead to much better results all round, than trying to build the same game to run on PS4/One, and then 'scale up'.
And on a related note, it is also why pushing games to support the One (ie Halo Infinite) is stupid, as the vast majority of people are now saying. Let it go! Just make the XSS the new minimum and go for it.
 
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