All purpose sales and sales rumors/anecdotes thread next gen+

[Shifty Geezer]

Gaming perhaps isn't as mass scale like watching movies, or listening to music, reading books...

I disagree if talking about all gaming and not just hardcore gaming. Gaming on phones is huge, and sales of games eclipses books, for example. It's not longer a case that games are played by a small section of the populace. Pretty much everyone does, including grandpa, even if it's just Candy Crush or Scrabble or something on their phone/tablet.

 

[Deleted member 11852]

If price isn't a major reason why PS4 is dominating sales, a price drop (either for PS4 or XB1) is a waste of money that could be better invested in producing more first parties, or securing more exclusives (the latter will backfire nowadays).

And this is the risk. Attach rates for games and services vary from infrequent low volume purchasers to frequent high volume purchasers and the latter have to compensate for the former in the short term if your profit return point relies on $xx being spent beyond the console purchase. There will also be purchases that result in zero-to-little ecosystem profit, like second consoles, consoles used in a kiosk capacity (potentially likely to increase with Windows 10 on Xbox One) and the latter also need to compensate for those as well.

A not dissimilar comparison is the difference between iOS and Android. There are far fewer iOS users but they spend more on apps and content than Android owners. Why? Nobody knows for sure. Both Sony and Microsoft want owners who will spend a lot but lowering the console's price is no guarantee you'll get high spending owners, arguably there are many product markets (like Android) where reducing the costs and lowering the barrier to entry makes it more likely you'll attract purchasers on a lower budget who because they are on a lower budget will spend less.

This isn't a problem either company can solve with a price cut.

 

[dobwal]

Microsoft, it has been said that they went into gaming to not give up the livingroom to Sony. But now it seems neither has the living room, its mobiles/tablets/laptops that have it. So why stay?

Because mobiles/tabs/laptops don't rule the living room. Consoles/setup boxes (roku/appleTV) and smartTVs rule the living room. And despite the prominence of smart TVs and Roku boxes today, the XB1 and PS4 are outpacing the 360 and PS3 sales. So consoles with diverse media based features are doing better than they were a gen ago even though a gen ago there was far less competition, so why shouldn't they stay?

 

[Shifty Geezer]

I think the extension of mobiles - dongles and Smart TVs - are what rule the living room, running services born on PC and mobiles and not consoles. That is, if someone wants to add streaming video to their setup, they'll buy a dedicated device, even if just a £35 Fire TV dongle. The access point to the content, the thing everyone wanting to 'control the living room' was after, isn't consoles and won't be. Consoles have just become a device for these other services, making the prospect of monetising the whole family's content unreachable for consoles. People will be buying Amazon and Google and iTunes movies and music, not MS or PS movies and music. And that's why these content services are being extended to mobiles.

 

[dobwal]

I think the extension of mobiles - dongles and Smart TVs - are what rule the living room, running services born on PC and mobiles and not consoles. That is, if someone wants to add streaming video to their setup, they'll buy a dedicated device, even if just a £35 Fire TV dongle. The access point to the content, the thing everyone wanting to 'control the living room' was after, isn't consoles and won't be. Consoles have just become a device for these other services, making the prospect of monetising the whole family's content unreachable for consoles. People will be buying Amazon and Google and iTunes movies and music, not MS or PS movies and music. And that's why these content services are being extended to mobiles.

"Ruling the living room" shouldn't boil down to the level prominence a device has in the TV streaming space. Given what type of people visit this forum we all should know very well that playing video games is very much part of the living room experience. None of these devices outside of consoles are prominent players in video games market. And they don't cater to the breadth of the whole experience of the living room, while consoles are far more feature rich.

If you really want to judge how prominent consoles are over roku and apple TV, then look at the level of revenues and profits are derived from the products. Its one thing to sell a $30 device its another to sell $400 device and these devices like Chromecast, amazon fire and roku aren't even doing PS4 type numbers when it comes to annual unit sales. The living room experience in the US alone extracts 10s of billions of revenue from consumers each year, the amount that goes to google, roku, apple and amazon probably amount to a pittances in terms of revenues generated directly by their dongles and setup boxes.

MS and Sony get to charge $350-$400 because they offer more and are price points none of dongles or setup boxes can sustain.

And by the way, its not xbox music anymore on windows or xbox1, its google's grooves that serves as the standard app, even though the interface hasn't changed.

(edit) I might be wrong on the last part. I just remember seeing the app and going "how did this google app become bloatware on my xbox". I might have miscontrued the word "groove" and "google" with that first quick glance.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

"Ruling the living room" shouldn't boil down to the level prominence a device has in the TV streaming space.

The phrase, as I understand it although I don't think it was ever defined, is the reasons why MS wanted to control the machine linked to the TV as the focus for all future content. Everyone knew one day media would be streamed over the internet, and selling content over that service would be easy money. The expectation, before mobiles existed, was that a dedicated box would do this job, and back then the 'computer' connected to the TV was a games console. Hence MS wanted their OS on this games console, and when N. and Sony didn't want to partner, they built their own machine. So 'ruling the living room' means 'controlling the content portal and monetising every transaction'.

If you really want to judge how prominent consoles are over roku and apple TV, then look at the level of revenues and profits are derived from the products.

It wasn't about selling hardware, but content. If you want to judge who rules the living room, look at the revenues and profits of the content providers. How much money does MS or Sony make from their movie services versus Google and Apple? Also you'd need to compare total dongle and widget sales from all suppliers, including cheap no-name Chinese devices, versus total console sales, and add in Smart TV sales where those same content services are used on Smart TV. And wireless streaming from mobile devices.

MS and Sony get to charge $350-$400 because they offer more and are price points none of dongles or setup boxes can sustain.

They get to charge $300+ for gamers. That's the only market willing to spend this. The rest of the living room users not interested in core games (some 10x as many people rough estimate) are serviced by cheaper devices. Consoles aren't the gateway to serving the entertainment needs of the living room for most folk.

(edit) I might be wrong on the last part. I just remember seeing the app and going "how did this google app become bloatware on my xbox". I might have miscontrued the word "groove" and "google" with that first quick glance.

It's MS's Groove rebranding. It's still another platform agnostic content service as MS are playing catchup to Apple and Google and Amazon etc.

 

[DieH@rd]

MS did not lower price at Gamescom.

 

[tuna]

Regarding Chromecast, since they are selling in a lot of places (more than PS4) I would think they are moving at quite high volume. But Google has not supplied any sales data.

 

[wco81]

Supposedly the big thing among a lot of younger people is watching TV shows and movies on their phones.

So living room may be irrelevant to certain demographics. Or maybe for everyone under a certain age from now on.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

That's also part of the issue. The 'living room' (required content portal) isn't tied to the single main screen.

 

[ZhugeEX]

 

[DieH@rd]

Shame we don't have an exact split.

 

[ZhugeEX]

When I said 12.5-13.5, I meant actual sell-through. I estimated that the XB1 is between 13-14M.
Zhuge simply said 'over 14M'. If it were close to 15M, I tihnk he would have said so. But based on his data and estimates, it's simply 'over 14M'. My guess is that it's right around 14M.

To clarify. I am stating that 14 million is the new minimum as such. In that the Xbox One will have shipped >14m. It is of course very hard to put an exact number on it but based on all the data I have and models I've created then over 14 million is guaranteed.

 

[ZhugeEX]

Shame we don't have an exact split.

Yup.

Feel free to make a thread on GAF about this btw.

 

[Globalisateur]

Are Wii supposed to compare those numbers (29 and 19) as if it was a fair comparison to make?
Aren't Wii forgetting something?

 

[Rangers]

What's the source on that NPD/GFK figure Zhuge?

Anyways, PS4/XO should be around 40m shipped combined (25/15), so yeah that leaves 11 million out there which strikes me as a bit high amount because no matter what anybody says NA/EU are the vast majority of the market. They're in rest of world and the channel I guess.

 

[mrcorbo]

Are Wii supposed to compare those numbers (29 and 19) as if it was a fair comparison to make?
Aren't Wii forgetting something?

I don't think so. What percentage of the people who bought a Wii and didn't also buy a PS3 or 360 do you think would have bought a 360 or PS3 instead if the Wii didn't exist?

 

[chris1515]

What's the source on that NPD/GFK figure Zhuge?

Anyways, PS4/XO should be around 40m shipped combined (25/15), so yeah that leaves 11 million out there which strikes me as a bit high amount because no matter what anybody says NA/EU are the vast majority of the market. They're in rest of world and the channel I guess.

It is only a part of European country, EU is 27 country... And there is some country not part of European Union like Switzerland and so on... Many tiers 2 country...

Edit: And it is sold through number

 

[goonergaz]

They get to charge $300+ for gamers. That's the only market willing to spend this. The rest of the living room users not interested in core games (some 10x as many people rough estimate) are serviced by cheaper devices. Consoles aren't the gateway to serving the entertainment needs of the living room for most folk.

I know you say rough estimate, but in the UK already roughly 1 on 10 homes have a PS4*...

* based on 2M PS4s sold by May and the UK having around 26M households.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

I suppose a miscalculation on my part is households versus population, so higher than 10%. But still not in the same league as movie consumption (which everyone in a household will partake in) or music.