All purpose Sales and Sales Rumours and Anecdotes [2023 Edition]

[Inuhanyou]

I think if they had a library of games to showcase you’d see more marketing. Large scale marketing deployments with no change in the current product doesn’t seem like a good use of money. Game pass is probably doing a better job marketing Xbox, than Xbox marketing itself at this point in time.

Sony barely has any games coming out right now but are still marketing their platform and their parties in every place they can. I don't buy "well what do you expect MS to do if they don't have games". Their hands aren't tied. They just had 6 to 8 games come out this year and nobody outside of the US and UK, countries they already market to, knows they exist.

This is a position they put themselves in and they could alleviate a lot of the pressure themselves. It's because of people believing trillion dollar Microsoft shouldn't have to do any of the hard ground work to understand markets details and appealing to markets outside of the US that i still see them struggling console wise even with ABK.

If their fundamentals aren't there it doesn't matter if they have one game or 100. They aren't marketing them to the right places or the people who need to see them for maximum market penetration or even having their console appeal to those places, it's gonna be a very uphill treck. And then what will the argument be? They need to eat more publishers? How many to cover for simply not being an attractive proportion for users who don't see MS trying to actively reach them?

 

[wco81]

You can't say MS isn't pouring enough resources into gaming.

They spent $70 billion on Activision, which is way more than they put into Open AI.

But MS has money to do both and a lot more. So they can stay in the gaming business and in all the major markets/regions as long as they want.

They may never win some of those regions but with their deep pockets, probably doesn't matter. The execs leading gaming will get their bonuses and promotions as long as they're not wiped out completely, like less than 10% market share despite investing billions.

 

[chris1515]

I don't assume they are exactly right. They might be wrong, but it's not because they "forgot" to advertise.

If what Chris1515 says is true about no one caring about GP in EU then that's another reason for MS not to promote heavily there. GP is the linchpin of their strategy. They aren't going to make a big promotional pinch until they can make GP more appealing.

In the meantime they're probably hoping the affordability of the XSS will improve their fortunes at Christmas

I didn't say no one care about GP. I say like everywhere in the world casual gamers don't care about GP or PS plus extra or premium. PS+ subscription numbers are flat at 47/48 millions subs since a long time. There is a ceiling for subscription. In France, the average age of gamer is 40 years old. People work, some have family and they have other hobby. Subscription is good for people who plays a lot of game. This is not the case of most gamers who can play a few hours per week. And the casual play the big third party games and from time to time a big first party game like Spiderman. And this game aren't in subscription services out of COD from next year. For gamers playing COD, FIFA and GTA or another big title like Hogwarts Legacy or Spiderman, subscription services aren't interesting because the game they want to play are not in the subscriptions services. They don't care about Hifi Rush or Teardown...

And XSS was available since a long time in Europe. It was out of a few months very easy to find one. If they wanted to improve their fortunes it was better to have more Xbox Series X available earlier in the generation. Now the PS5 momentum is crazy. And People are ready to pay 549 euros for a console or 429 euros during Black Friday.

 

[Karamazov]

There is a third Xbox "console" available now, Quest 3 with xcloud ^^

 

[Caayn]

People know Xbox exists. They are regularly at E3, game awards etc. they are a known brand globally in the console space. But they aren’t a very good global supplier, and they are still struggling with getting out marquee titles players would like play for the masses

I have no doubt that that's the case for countries such as the USA but it's certainly not in all regions. People knew that Xbox existed during the Xbox360/PS3 generation but since then they've faded into obscurity at least where I live. Sure the more active person knows that it exists but your average school kid and their parents, or the person that mostly visists local news and facebook(-esque) pages, only seem to know Playstation and Nintendo.

Xbox was and is nowhere to be seen during this years holiday advertisements, finding Xbox in a physical store is a rarity these days. When you do find Xbox it's a store it's usually leftover stock or makes zero sense such as this bundle that was take this month (https://tweakers.net/i/koAxHrzqm86y...p_exif()/f/image/KEE0ZIYRFRtjLIcz9FUeBmej.jpg, Xbox Series S with a physical copy of last years Fifa that only contains the Xbox One version not the XSX|S version). E3/summergamesfest and the Game Awards, while global, are still very USA centric shows. But to their credit MS/Xbox is present at Gamescon so I'll give them that. It's not just advertisments either. Localisations are often terrible, this was a lot better during the Xbox 360 days, it feels computer generated without any form of QA.

I think that MS is making a mistake by ignoring a minimum brand awareness. When they do have a game to advertise it'll be all the more difficult because people aren't familiar with the brand attached to it.

 

[iroboto]

Sony barely has any games coming out right now but are still marketing their platform and their parties in every place they can. I don't buy "well what do you expect MS to do if they don't have games". Their hands aren't tied. They just had 6 to 8 games come out this year and nobody outside of the US and UK, countries they already market to, knows they exist.

This is a position they put themselves in and they could alleviate a lot of the pressure themselves. It's because of people believing trillion dollar Microsoft shouldn't have to do any of the hard ground work to understand markets details and appealing to markets outside of the US that i still see them struggling console wise even with ABK.

If their fundamentals aren't there it doesn't matter if they have one game or 100. They aren't marketing them to the right places or the people who need to see them for maximum market penetration or even having their console appeal to those places, it's gonna be a very uphill treck. And then what will the argument be? They need to eat more publishers? How many to cover for simply not being an attractive proportion for users who don't see MS trying to actively reach them?

In totally agree with that but I think there are some major assumptions here about Xbox’s ability to operate outside of the Americas. Johnnys words here to do touch on the situation, though market research alone is not enough. At the end of the day profitability matters, and we have little to no insight into what that is.

For all we know, every Xbox sold in EU is not just a lost, it’s an exceptional loss regardless of how many titles they buy with the console. And what you see there today is just an indication of pulling back on those losses but providing enough hardware there to call yourself an international competitor. I don’t think they are or want to be that type of platform.

I think after 4 generations of Xbox, with each generation having less and less hardware presence in EU is probably an indication that hardware in those regions (for whatever reason) is not a viable strategy for them.

MS doesn’t really exhibit the behaviour of someone that is risk adverse. We’ve seen them throw millions at failed products, millions on exclusive contracts for Mixer, and in the end it didn’t work. Nothing they could do could turn people away from twitch; and they ended up closing shop.

They are regularly changing directions and backpedaling from the normal path of consoles. And I think that’s fine, because that’s not the market they appear to want to compete in. They want to grow the cloud market because they are, largely now, a cloud company. And there’s no formal road to walk to do it, they behave like a company that is trying to figure it out. And with that, understandably, you don’t need on-premise solutions as a cloud company especially in areas where you have little to no penetration.

they must have indication that they would sooner succeed as a cloud provider in EU and profit more than they would ever as a console provider and profit less; otherwise they would have targeted low hanging fruit by now.

TLDR: I agree that if Xbox was only competing for console business they are doing it wrong. But there is a clear strategy emerging that they don’t want to be a pure console business such that they make decisions that stray from a more traditional path we understand.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

For all we know, every Xbox sold in EU is not just a lost, it’s an exceptional loss regardless of how many titles they buy with the console. And what you see there today is just an indication of pulling back on those losses but providing enough hardware there to call yourself an international competitor. I don’t think they are or want to be that type of platform.

I think after 4 generations of Xbox, with each generation having less and less hardware presence in EU is probably an indication that hardware in those regions (for whatever reason) is not a viable strategy for them.

If EU is a lost cause, it's a lost cause. But then how does one hope MS can turn things around for XB this Christmas? If MS can turn things around, they can only do that with the right offering and telling people about it, right?

For those saying marketing isn't the way to grow XB in Europe, what is the way to get more XB console sales in Europe?

 

[Globalisateur]

...
And XSS was available since a long time in Europe. It was out of a few months very easy to find one. If they wanted to improve their fortunes it was better to have more Xbox Series X available earlier in the generation. Now the PS5 momentum is crazy. And People are ready to pay 549 euros for a console or 429 euros during Black Friday.

This is also my anectdotal opinion from launch. Plenty of XSS available that nobody wanted, instead the few Xbox people I knew wanted the XSX and had to wait because of poor availability in France. Now of course it's available but it's way too late.

Most people don't think XSX is an attractive gaming hardware (for many different reasons I won't elaborate here) and many Xbox fans don't even believe XSS is an attractive gaming hardware. I don't think MS did that strategy after some market analysis, more like they wanted it to work to push their Gamepass service, the same way they have being pushing Windows OEMs in the world since decades ago. I don't hink it's more complicated than that.

If they had looked at history they would have known that a less desirable but cheaper hardware (like the Gamecube) is not what the majority of players want to buy. And the gamecube had a great library of games and was actually a very powerful machine but it was perceived as a kid machine not fit for adult gaming (Nintendo's fault here).

By the way with the Wii Nintendo really learned a lot here. They produced a desirable cool gaming platform that was rather expensive and weak and had an immense success with that. In the end it's really the perceived attractivity of the hardware that matters the most!

 

[Globalisateur]

If EU is a lost cause, it's a lost cause. But then how does one hope MS can turn things around for XB this Christmas? If MS can turn things around, they can only do that with the right offering and telling people about it, right?

For those saying marketing isn't the way to grow XB in Europe, what is the way to get more XB console sales in Europe?

For Series consoles it's over here. What they can do (and they already do it) is to make deals to limit damage. They need to quickly create a new generation of machines and to create an attractive gaming hardware, ideally only one this time (for it to be desirable). How do you make that? For Switch it was the cool portability factor, for Wii it was the Wii remote and new ways of playing, for PS5 it was both the new DualSense with its new immersive features and the blazingly fast SSD (actually I/O but faster SSD is easier to market).

For their next generation of machines MS need to create something original, something that will make their machine look super cool and attractive. A gamepass machine combined with Starfield is not enough, most people (that could be interested in Starfield) have PCs for that kind of gaming.

 

[iroboto]

If EU is a lost cause, it's a lost cause. But then how does one hope MS can turn things around for XB this Christmas? If MS can turn things around, they can only do that with the right offering and telling people about it, right?

For those saying marketing isn't the way to grow XB in Europe, what is the way to get more XB console sales in Europe?

For me, I see 2 discussions happening here: if you don’t show up to the race, how do you expect to win; the second, why aren’t you showing up to the race?

The former is obvious but its ultimately results focused, in particular the goal of console expansion. The latter is about how MS has been behaving and the drivers for that.

So in response to the question using the latter, it’s entirely probable that they don’t want to get more consoles into Europe. They won’t turn things around for Christmas for Xbox consoles. They are, more likely, going to push into the PC space where they know they have Windows, and windows has Xbox. And they have PC versions and PC gamepass.

 

[RobertR1]

I personally don't see MS getting to 60m no matter how long they drag out the generation unless they're basically going to give away hardware with CoD 69 (or whatever they're on) in the coming years.

50m would be best case. PS5 has marketshare, mindshare tied up. Anyone newer here who thinks I'm a Sony fanboy might want to look up my history btw

 

[iroboto]

I personally don't see MS getting to 60m no matter how long they drag out the generation unless they're basically going to give away hardware with CoD 69 (or whatever they're on) in the coming years.

50m would be best case. PS5 has marketshare, mindshare tied up. Anyone newer here who thinks I'm a Sony fanboy might want to look up my history btw

If nothing changes this is guaranteed. But if Sony delivers a few more years like 2023, and somehow Xbox is able to flip it around and start putting in GOTY candidates, Xbox should be able to break 60m.

 

[Inuhanyou]

In totally agree with that but I think there are some major assumptions here about Xbox’s ability to operate outside of the Americas. Johnnys words here to do touch on the situation, though market research alone is not enough. At the end of the day profitability matters, and we have little to no insight into what that is.

For all we know, every Xbox sold in EU is not just a lost, it’s an exceptional loss regardless of how many titles they buy with the console. And what you see there today is just an indication of pulling back on those losses but providing enough hardware there to call yourself an international competitor. I don’t think they are or want to be that type of platform.

I think after 4 generations of Xbox, with each generation having less and less hardware presence in EU is probably an indication that hardware in those regions (for whatever reason) is not a viable strategy for them.

MS doesn’t really exhibit the behaviour of someone that is risk adverse. We’ve seen them throw millions at failed products, millions on exclusive contracts for Mixer, and in the end it didn’t work. Nothing they could do could turn people away from twitch; and they ended up closing shop.

They are regularly changing directions and backpedaling from the normal path of consoles. And I think that’s fine, because that’s not the market they appear to want to compete in. They want to grow the cloud market because they are, largely now, a cloud company. And there’s no formal road to walk to do it, they behave like a company that is trying to figure it out. And with that, understandably, you don’t need on-premise solutions as a cloud company especially in areas where you have little to no penetration.

they must have indication that they would sooner succeed as a cloud provider in EU and profit more than they would ever as a console provider and profit less; otherwise they would have targeted low hanging fruit by now.

TLDR: I agree that if Xbox was only competing for console business they are doing it wrong. But there is a clear strategy emerging that they don’t want to be a pure console business such that they make decisions that stray from a more traditional path we understand.

But if your right their doing things even worse by being a third party publisher in all but name while at the same time segmenting their content from supposed non competitors in the console space after major buyouts, those companies which actually do have claws in that market.

They say they want to be cloud everything but also believe cloud isn't there yet and might not ever be based on how direct games are versus a passive medium like watching movies or tv are.

It feels like they have no idea what they are doing and simply throwing stuff at a wall. Which somewhat makes sense when your scrambling (Sonys overcorrection to gaas to circumvent worse case scenarios of the ABK deal for example), but MS is still deciding on what part of the market they even want to exist in it seems like. They should figure that out before anything else

 

[Globalisateur]

If nothing changes this is guaranteed. But if Sony delivers a few more years like 2023, and somehow Xbox is able to flip it around and start putting in GOTY candidates, Xbox should be able to break 60m.

But in 2023 they had Spider-man 2! That's largely enough for a good majority of players.

MS starting putting GOTY in candidates? how is that likely considering the companies they currently own? When looking at Bethesda you see the quality of their games has being declining steadily. They need to make some big changes, like changing the director of their big games as it isn't working anymore. But unfortunately both their 2 big upcoming games are being directed by the same person.

 

[chris1515]

If nothing changes this is guaranteed. But if Sony delivers a few more years like 2023, and somehow Xbox is able to flip it around and start putting in GOTY candidates, Xbox should be able to break 60m.

Sony have much more games announced for 2024 like FF7 Rebirth, Stellar Blade, Gran Blue Relink, Concord, Rise of Ronin* and 2023 will be the best year for Sony sales around 25 millions PS5. After Q3 2023 calendar year, Sony kept an inventory of 13 millions consoles to be able to meet the demand of PS5 for Q4 2023.

People when they buy a new console don't think about 2023 title but all the title since 2020. Demon Soul's Remake, Returnal, Ratchet and Clank Rift Apart, FF16, Spiderman 2, Kena and for people stopping to play on PS4, Spiderman Miles Morales, God of War Ragnarok and Horizon Forbidden West continue to exist.

* Bold for the title confirmed to have a release date in 2024 for the moment
FF7 Rebirth
Silent Hill 2 Remake
Helldivers 2
MLB24
Destiny 2 The Final Shape
Foamstars
Concord
Baby Steps
Pacific Drive
Death Stranding 2
TLOU Part 2 PC/PS5
Wolverine
FF16 both DLCs
Granblue Fantasy Relink
Rise of the Ronin
Lost Soul Aside
Stellar Blade
God of War smaller title
Maybe a surprise Ghost of Tshusima 2 for example

 

[Globalisateur]

Sony have much more games announced for 2024 like FF7 Rebirth, Stellar Blade, Gran Blue Relink, Concord, Rise of Ronin* and 2023 will be the best year for Sony sales around 25 millions PS5. After Q3 2023 calendar year, Sony kept an inventory of 13 millions consoles to be able to meet the demand of PS5 for Q4 2023.

People when they buy a new console don't think about 2023 title but all the title since 2020. Demon Soul's Remake, Returnal, Ratchet and Clank Rift Apart, FF16, Spiderman 2, Jena and for people stopping to play on PS4, Spiderman Miles Morales, God of War Ragnarok and Horizon Forbidden West continue to exist.

...

You meant Kena of course. I found it really a pity that that one is still not available on Xbox. Such a nice game! It's like a modern high quality Zelda 64 kind of game on Playstation.

Also Kenshin is still oddly not available on Xbox. it's such a big game now even in western countries. I often see US streamers playing either Fortnite or that game.

 

[chris1515]

You meant Kena of course. I found it really a pity that that one is still not available on Xbox. Such a nice game! It's like a modern high quality Zelda 64 kind of game on Playstation.

Also Kenshin is still oddly not available on Xbox. it's such a big game now even in western countries. I often see US streamers playing either Fortnite or that game.

The next Ember Labs game is a PS5 exclusive game maybe it is a future Sony Playstation Studios. Sony have a partnership with Mihoyo and Genshin Impact and Honkai Star rails are PS5 exclusives probably until end of the generation.

 

[Silent_Buddha]

And now for something complete different...

Why is PS5 doing so much worse than PS4 in Europe? Unlike PS4, the US is now the largest territory for sales of PlayStation. You have to go all the way back to the original Playstation 1 in order see NA with more PlayStation sales than Europe.

In the US, PS5 is now ahead of the PS4 by approx. +1.26 million units sold. PS5 at ~16.1 million units vs PS4 at ~14.8 million units.

PS5 vs PS4 Sales Comparison in the US - October 2023

The VGChartz sales comparison series of articles are updated monthly and each one focuses on a different sales [...]

www.vgchartz.com

In the EU, PS5 is now way behind the PS4 by approx. -4.6 million units sold. PS5 at ~14.5 million units vs PS4 at ~19.0 million units.

PS5 vs PS4 Sales Comparison in Europe - October 2023

The VGChartz sales comparison series of articles are updated monthly and each one focuses on a different sales [...]

www.vgchartz.com

I wonder if the war in Ukraine is affecting this as I know food prices (at least grain) were up across Europe due to the war. So perhaps people aren't confident enough to spend money on a console?

Related to the previous conversation here, I wonder if this is also contributing to Xbox Series sales taking a nose dive across Europe. Basically, in Europe, if you are struggling to afford a console are you more likely to not buy an Xbox or more likely to not buy a PlayStation? Sure, the XBS-S is a great value and likely why it sells way more as a percentage of Xbox sales in Europe than it does in NA, but it still has far fewer compelling exclusives in a sales territory that has always leaned towards the PlayStation brand.

Interestingly the PS4/XBO generation ended at a little over 3:1 (3.1:1) in favor of PS4 in Europe while PS5/XBS generation the ratio is currently a little over 2:1 (2.1:1) in favor of PS5 in Europe. So XBS has actually greatly decreased the sales gap between PlayStation and Xbox. However, this was likely due to the supply shortages of PS5 in the first couple of years and I would expect the gap to grow larger by the end of the generation.

Regards,
SB

 

[Deleted member 11852]

Why is PS5 doing so much worse than PS4 in Europe? Unlike PS4, the US is now the largest territory for sales of PlayStation. You have to go all the way back to the original Playstation 1 in order see NA with more PlayStation sales than Europe.

It's almost certainly due to the relative difference in inflation, which across Europe is generally much higher than it was pre-lockdown. Whilst consoles and gaming has always been popular in Europe, when you have a make a choice, plenty of people would rather buy season ticket to watch actual football than buy a console to play FIFA.

 

[Globalisateur]

And now for something complete different...

Why is PS5 doing so much worse than PS4 in Europe? Unlike PS4, the US is now the largest territory for sales of PlayStation. You have to go all the way back to the original Playstation 1 in order see NA with more PlayStation sales than Europe.

In the US, PS5 is now ahead of the PS4 by approx. +1.26 million units sold. PS5 at ~16.1 million units vs PS4 at ~14.8 million units.

PS5 vs PS4 Sales Comparison in the US - October 2023

The VGChartz sales comparison series of articles are updated monthly and each one focuses on a different sales [...]

www.vgchartz.com

In the EU, PS5 is now way behind the PS4 by approx. -4.6 million units sold. PS5 at ~14.5 million units vs PS4 at ~19.0 million units.

PS5 vs PS4 Sales Comparison in Europe - October 2023

The VGChartz sales comparison series of articles are updated monthly and each one focuses on a different sales [...]

www.vgchartz.com

I wonder if the war in Ukraine is affecting this as I know food prices (at least grain) were up across Europe due to the war. So perhaps people aren't confident enough to spend money on a console?

Related to the previous conversation here, I wonder if this is also contributing to Xbox Series sales taking a nose dive across Europe. Basically, in Europe, if you are struggling to afford a console are you more likely to not buy an Xbox or more likely to not buy a PlayStation? Sure, the XBS-S is a great value and likely why it sells way more as a percentage of Xbox sales in Europe than it does in NA, but it still has far fewer compelling exclusives in a sales territory that has always leaned towards the PlayStation brand.

Interestingly the PS4/XBO generation ended at a little over 3:1 (3.1:1) in favor of PS4 in Europe while PS5/XBS generation the ratio is currently a little over 2:1 (2.1:1) in favor of PS5 in Europe. So XBS has actually greatly decreased the sales gap between PlayStation and Xbox. However, this was likely due to the supply shortages of PS5 in the first couple of years and I would expect the gap to grow larger by the end of the generation.

Regards,
SB

Things are crazy expensive in Europe. Like in US inflation is an all time high and people are losing their jobs.

But also Sony prioritized US and UK countries for like 2 years. PS4 was easily available at 400€ after 6 months. Here PS5 were bought at like 600€ or more for like 2 years (when you could even buy one). Base price of PS5 is still 550€ here.

To give you an idea, PS5 digital is now at 450€ when XSS + 3 months GP is available at... 230€. Playstation is en expensive (and attractive) hardware here, no far from reaching iPhone level. And obviously Sony are milking the hell out of those poor Europeans players which is not new. They were doing the same with PS2.