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

Been thinking about what Xbox might do with the Xbox design lab when it comes back next year, and I'm pretty sure we are going to see much higher customization for the consoles themselves. I think they will be using direct to product printing, where you print directly onto the console. Some companies can even print textures. below is a link to a video by canon demonstrating printing onto a laptop. The design of the consoles with large perfectly flat faces makes them absolutely perfect for this sort of thing.
Beyond fully custom, upload your own graphics customization, it would also make special edition consoles much cheaper to make, I could definitely see them making a Starfield edition series S when that comes out, include a month trial to game pass and they would sell like hot cakes. I doubt they would even have to raise the price of the console at all.

 
I hate to be the guy to bring it up, but all of the talk from the Xbox executives / marketing teams about the difference between the two consoles being obvious has a bitter taste of irony now that they're both available.
 
Aha, still might be true if they ever show up hah

“I thought the games line-up that we’re going to have at launch I felt really good about, and we got more clarity on what they’re doing at their show which just helped us focus in on more of what we have, and I think that will be a strength for us at launch." - Phil Spencer

I guess a touch premature.

Just for the record, the Series X is great and I'll buy one a little further into the generation. I'm just pointing out the irony of these statements.
 
“I thought the games line-up that we’re going to have at launch I felt really good about, and we got more clarity on what they’re doing at their show which just helped us focus in on more of what we have, and I think that will be a strength for us at launch." - Phil Spencer

I guess a touch premature.

Just for the record, the Series X is great and I'll buy one a little further into the generation. I'm just pointing out the irony of these statements.


I'll agree with the irony,
Not sure when that spencer quote if from but tbf if it was after the sony show but before the MS show in july he was right to feel good about it, they were going to have Halo, crossfireX (only on xbox not even on pc), medium, scorn, gears tactics, tetris affect, etc etc. But they literally all, bar gears tactics which was already out on pc got delayed.

I wonder why the pandemic seemed to affect microsoft so much more on the game delay side of things than it did sony? maybe sony was just better at hiding it and had more planned
 
Unfortunately my comment has lost it's original context. It was posted in the DigitalFoundry thread originally.

These comments have irony because, as of today, the PlayStation is the console that is performing better at launch. This is in direct contradiction to Spencer's comments.
 
Unfortunately my comment has lost it's original context. It was posted in the DigitalFoundry thread originally.

These comments have irony because, as of today, the PlayStation is the console that is performing better at launch. This is in direct contradiction to Spencer's comments.
Ps5 is way in front. I spend nearly all my gaming time with Demons Souls right now. I’ll switch to Xbox for MP when I’m called to play.

but how unstable the OS is on ps5 is aggravating af
 
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Ps5 is way in front. I spend nearly all my gaming time with Demons Souls right now. I’ll switch to Xbox for MP when I’m called to play.

but how unstable the OS is on ps5 is aggravating af

God yeah, it's not without its faults.

I hope my posts don't come across too badly - it's interesting to discuss these comments with hindsight. I'd like to own both consoles and would very much like *both* to be successful.
 
God yeah, it's not without its faults.

I hope my posts don't come across too badly - it's interesting to discuss these comments with hindsight. I'd like to own both consoles and would very much like *both* to be successful.
it's okay.
I'm not offended, you're absolutely right that Phil was full of it; after reading the documentation, he would have known they are no where close to releasing a candidate that would struggle out of the gates.
With an open checkbook he could have alleviated the issues by doubling up on memory. That would solve 1 problem among many, a major problem it would appear, but the narrative around launch would have been better that what we have today.

They came out with the lights down low, some fancy music, a crew to follow behind, and he gets nearly knocked down in round one after tapping gloves.

But then again, perhaps it's only tech forums really following here. I suppose if you don't care, you're not going to notice a lot of difference between the two.
 
Ps5 is way in front. I spend nearly all my gaming time with Demons Souls right now. I’ll switch to Xbox for MP when I’m called to play.

but how unstable the OS is on ps5 is aggravating af

PS5 just made the homerun imo. DS is great, so is spiderman and astrobot.... Then we have rift apart coming, along with GT7 and ragnarok. After that we see forbidden west. All these games are exclusives/or use the PS5's power, 3d audio, dual sense features and the SSD. Ray tracing to where its possible too.

I hope my posts don't come across too badly

Nah, we deserve it :p It is what it is, ive been teamxbox and all, but ye, things turned out like they are. Was always going PS5 for console and PC, anyway. Really like the PS5, it delivers. Dunno about others but i like the blue light it emits.
 
but how unstable the OS is on ps5 is aggravating af

Really? What are you having problems with?

I know there is a bug impacting charging controllers from the USB port when in rest mode but I'm using the charging stations. Other than that, since getting my PS5 on Thursday I've seamlessly transferred my PS4 saves across, moved my PS4 external storage drive across and downloaded (still going) around 300+GB of PlayStation Collection games (FF XV, Persona 5, Bloodborne, Monster Hunter World, The Last Guardian, Mortal Kombat), have downloaded and installed patches for PS4 games Ghost of Tsushima and Dying Light, bought No Man's Sky and installed that and played a lot of Astrobot and AC Valhalla and zero issues at all - along with a pretty hefty patch for Valhalla and milder day one patches for Spider-Man Miles Morales and Sackboy.

Thus far, this has been a smooth experience for me.
 
Really? What are you having problems with?

I know there is a bug impacting charging controllers from the USB port when in rest mode but I'm using the charging stations. Other than that, since getting my PS5 on Thursday I've seamlessly transferred my PS4 saves across, moved my PS4 external storage drive across and downloaded (still going) around 300+GB of PlayStation Collection games (FF XV, Persona 5, Bloodborne, Monster Hunter World, The Last Guardian, Mortal Kombat), have downloaded and installed patches for PS4 games Ghost of Tsushima and Dying Light, bought No Man's Sky and installed that and played a lot of Astrobot and AC Valhalla and zero issues at all - along with a pretty hefty patch for Valhalla and milder day one patches for Spider-Man Miles Morales and Sackboy.

Thus far, this has been a smooth experience for me.
I tend to get hit with the perma crash on launch bug. For whatever reason the disc drive won’t spin up to read Demons Souls so it just sits there stalled. If I force quit and keep retrying this process the UI grinds to molasses and then I’m in the danger zone while trying to shut it down.
The course of action I take is restarting the console as soon as I see this issue.
The second problem I’ve run into is just weird UI slow downs if my internet connection is impacted upon resume. Basically for whatever reason the game runs at full speed but if I tap the button it’s just barely able to move around the menu.
Lastly I’ve had to endure 1 database rebuild on boot up so far.
 
it's okay.
I'm not offended, you're absolutely right that Phil was full of it; after reading the documentation, he would have known they are no where close to releasing a candidate that would struggle out of the gates.
With an open checkbook he could have alleviated the issues by doubling up on memory. That would solve 1 problem among many, a major problem it would appear, but the narrative around launch would have been better that what we have today.

They came out with the lights down low, some fancy music, a crew to follow behind, and he gets nearly knocked down in round one after tapping gloves.

But then again, perhaps it's only tech forums really following here. I suppose if you don't care, you're not going to notice a lot of difference between the two.

The only thing that I would suggest is that both Sony and Microsoft stop using fanboy language ("the most powerful" or "the most fastest") that could potentially come-back and bite them. Just present your damn product as is... and a few Key features that make your product worth while.
 
I tend to get hit with the perma crash on launch bug. For whatever reason the disc drive won’t spin up to read Demons Souls so it just sits there stalled. If I force quit and keep retrying this process the UI grinds to molasses and then I’m in the danger zone while trying to shut it down.
Is this something specific to Demon Souls? I've got three PS5 discs (Valhalla, Miles Morales and Sackboy - with Dirt 5 on the way) and have been swapping between Astrobot, Valhalla and Sackboy quite a lot not had any software issues or with discs not starting up. I have read that Miles Morales was causing some console crashes but I've yet to start it.

Any problems with any other disc-based games?

But then again, perhaps it's only tech forums really following here. I suppose if you don't care, you're not going to notice a lot of difference between the two.
Nope. :nope: I agree with your analogy though. The "most powerful console" stuff, which in my experience was not that prominent, just the odd tweet and mentions on Microsoft's website, could bite them on the arse. Sony, ironically mostly poor comms all year, under-promised and over-delivered. This is generally the best approach.
 
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Sony, ironically mostly poor comms all year, under-promised and over-delivered. This is generally the best approach.

I think Sony just delivered, while MS under-delivered greatly. Thanks to Xbox doing as it does now, only lifts Sony.
Still, i think the dualsense is the most exciting new feature so far, performance improvements are a given, not many non-tech intrested talk about Zen2 and rdna gpus, but i hear many talking about the controller and the new UI.
 
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