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

It can even be argued that they showed off the power levels earlier than their competitor with minecraft and gears 5.

Not really. Sony showed off their SSD and I/O controller streaming/loading tech first with Spider-Man in earlier PS5 Alpha kits. But once again, that is not the point. Gamers want to see next-generation XBSX games (not cross-generation titles) running on actual hardware, not PC, or corporate promises.
 
yea it's bad for both. except their direct competitor has less issues around showing their games
Your right , but we are still over two months from release. Perhaps MS wants to show game play at the announcement for the xss. Perhaps have a comparison where they show it running on both and explain the diffrences. I dunno we will see. I would worry if its the middle of oct and ms still isn't showing stuff. Well i wont really worry since i'm just upgrading my video card

Not really. Sony showed off their SSD and I/O controller streaming/loading tech first with Spider-Man in earlier PS5 Alpha kits. But once again, that is not the point. Gamers want to see next-generation XBSX games (not cross-generation titles) running on actual hardware, not PC, or corporate promises.
I don't the exact dates on everything. I do know ms showed off the console earlier and they had gears and minecraft also running earlier in the year. I'm not really interested in sony so i just remember a magazine article about spiderman running on an ssd.
 
There's a limit to tom foolery as the business still must report to shareholders. Shareholders want to see the stock move up, therefore, the products must be launched. Both must launch when their time is due.

Microsoft management (incl. Phil Spencer) report to the Board of Directors, the Board of Directors report to investors. The board decide what pertinent information annual and quarterly reports should contain, this is partially mandated by regulation (the SEC in the US) and in part by agreement between the board and significant shareholders.

Generally the board will report on significant business by either revenue, net profit/loss, or relative market growth/decline and Xbox alone currently doesn't fall into any of these brackets. Microsoft's 2020 Annual Report is a month overdue (COVID-19 probably) but if you look at their 2019 report you'll see Xbox is one cog in their Gaming operations which include Live, advertising(!?!) and cloud gaming services in which they list Apple as a cloud competitor - I'm not sure what this an exact reference too. Once the 2020 report is out we'll see if this has changed, it may well have!

Xbox is part of Gaming which in terms of reporting gets grouped together with Microsoft's Search, AI, Windows and Surface businesses. so you can't tell how well Xbox is doing versus Windows or Search or Surface or AI -it's just all tossed in together. Collectively these business units are doing ok but it's small potatoes to Microsoft's big business which are the only ones they get focussed revenue/profit/loss breakdowns. Xbox just isn't going to move Microsoft's share prices except by tenths of a percent - unlike say Azure going down for a day which would hit the stock price as the market would lose confidence in what is a big part of Microsoft's business.
 
New Place Holder Prices from UK Retailer
499.99
£499.99 is pretty reasonable, One X launched at £449.99. If true, this will likely mean Sony would be steered to launch at £429.99 for PS5DE and £449.99 for PS5 - if not cheaper (smaller die, less SSD etc).

Alanah pointed out the extra .99 (these are British pennies - 100 to a pound) and .99 is absolutely normal for the UK. You almost never get things priced at a round £499.00, it's always £499.99.

As to why retailers would now know the pricing before it's been announced, this could be a sign that the price announcement is both imminent and that pre-orders are about to go live as well. This is an EU thing, you can't entertain pre-order, which is effectively a form of sales contract under EU law, without know the full costs involved.

I'm not saying that the leak is accurate, but everything about this makes sense for the UK. I'm now expecting something from Microsoft in the next week. We're in September in a few days and the damn thing is launching in November. That could be potentially as little as nine weeks away.
 
Sony can price anything as much as they want without caring about what Microsoft does.
Sure they can, but they are in a competitive market. While you can't let your competitor's actions dictate your strategy, you are still competing for the limited funds of consumers and you don't want to be taking on any larger loss than necessary. Microsoft have the more powerful system and trying to sell PS5 at Series X price parity wouldn't look good. Traditionally, cheaper consoles have always sold better and faster so being price conscious is smart.

Sony don't need to underprice PS5 at launch, it's going to sell.
 
Sure they can, but they are in a competitive market. While you can't let your competitor's actions dictate your strategy, you are still competing for the limited funds of consumers and you don't want to be taking on any larger loss than necessary. Microsoft have the more powerful system and trying to sell PS5 at Series X price parity wouldn't look good. Traditionally, cheaper consoles have always sold better and faster so being price conscious is smart.

Sony don't need to underprice PS5 at launch, it's going to sell.
Maybe, maybe not. PS2 >>> Xbox 360 situation say hello!
Pricing is primary, everything else is secondary.
 
Maybe, maybe not. PS2 >>> Xbox 360 situation say hello!
Pricing is primary, everything else is secondary.

Pricing is not “primary”. Pricing is one part of a big equation, together with Games, games, games, power and features, and I'm sure a few other things. Everything needs to have a certain balance so that the value proposition makes sense.
 
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At this point at least show me all those 3rd party games looking amazing on Series X.
Yes, I want to see something that backs up claims of XSX having significantly better h/w or at least the extra power MS keep banging on about.

https://www.sony.net/SonyInfo/IR/library/corporatereport/CorporateReport2020_E.pdf

It sounds like sony will be releasing more and more games on pc.
Great link to a massive PDF, any takers to find the needle?

Other than that, logic dictates they will release more...because they can’t release less
 
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