First of all, I said they'd be lucky to lose half.
Secondly, Gold isn't mandatory with xbone is it?
If so, see point number 1, and adjust accordingly.
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First of all, I said they'd be lucky to lose half.
Secondly, Gold isn't mandatory with xbone is it?
If so, see point number 1, and adjust accordingly.
The loss of marketshare can go around in circles. Loss of marketshare might mean smaller userbase, which might means negativ public awareness, which could also mean less support, which in turn might means even less sales. Sure, at the end of the day, profitability is a key point, but it's not the only thing that matters.
But yeah, even if X1 is a "failure" (in whatever sense of the world) it surely won't be as if the world will end.
Johnny Awesome
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Maybe, but E3 showed that Xbox One launch titles are at least as impressive as those on PS4.
The price will come down, btw. People act like there's always going to be a $499 price tag on Xbox One.
The real questions to ask are:
Why did Sony feel the need to leave $100 on the table this launch?
What happens when people discover the advantages of not needing discs and sharing games with friends?
What happens when people realize that PSN multiplayer is no longer free?
MS has the worst PR that they can possibly have right now. As things get better for them on the PR front, the Xbox One's fortunes will rise.
Johnny Awesome
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Back in 2005 MS realized something really fundamental that was the cornerstone of their success with X360: Gamers buy the console that their friends have. That's why they knew that the only way to beat Sony was to launch a year earlier and they suffered through the RRoD PR to make that happen (process nodes weren't small enough to keep the heat down in the early units).
This time they can't launch much earlier than Sony (maybe a month if the online retailer dates are anything to go by), so to get the friends networking effect going they are offering the games library sharing. Early adopters will be able to share their games with their friends. This could be quite significant.
PS: I think you guys are going to be shocked how many MS will sell over Xbox Live through the dashboard ads. For all we know MS has already sold 3 million units. That might even by why the pre-orders at retailers are so imbalanced.
This time they can't launch much earlier than Sony (maybe a month if the online retailer dates are anything to go by), so to get the friends networking effect going they are offering the games library sharing. Early adopters will be able to share their games with their friends. This could be quite significant.
PS: I think you guys are going to be shocked how many MS will sell over Xbox Live through the dashboard ads. For all we know MS has already sold 3 million units. That might even by why the pre-orders at retailers are so imbalanced.
As has been stated, we are far from conclusive evidence of xbone games keeping up with ps4 games. When multiplats hit, then we can talk.
Sure the price will come down, but so will ps4 price. Bottom line, regardless of price or policy change, 1.8TF > 1.2TF
They want mass adoption immediately. They learned from their past mistakes with ps3 and have adjusted their gameplan accordingly at every phase of their ps division. I thought nearly everything they did with ps3 was a mistake, but low and behold, they have learned, improved and moved on from them. From system architecture, to price, to attitude toward developers and gamers.
Advantage of trading in games and selling them trumps that. And from what I can see, Sony will also allow full game downloads for those that prefer the convenience an all digital library.
Also, the advantage of playing all ps4 games remotely on psvita is a nice bonus too.
I dunno, do you suppose they would flock to xbl where the fee is more expensive? Or stick with the platform that offers more powerful hardware, more customer friendly DRM, and has all the franchises they already like.
PR doesn't fix the hard issues with the console. There are policy changes which could take place, but seeing their hard-line attitude toward questions asked in that regard, I doubt it. Regardless of flexible policy changes (which could revert back to restrictive) the hardware in the box will always make it an "almost as good as ps4" experience for the life of the console. That along with the higher price, mandatory kinect, mandatory internet, restrictive used games policy all lead me to believe the poll in the OP is representative of a large shift away from Xbox and toward PS4.
Bagel seed
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@Johnny
3 million reserved on Live already huh. If you're seriously entertaining that figure I'm not sure a rational discussion is possible here.
The polls and preorder ratios have spoken imo. Friends seem to be telling their friends to go with PS4.. just like how 360 started. I don't see that changing anytime soon from now until launch even if MS PR stops digging a deeper hole for themselves.
3 million reserved on Live already huh. If you're seriously entertaining that figure I'm not sure a rational discussion is possible here.
The polls and preorder ratios have spoken imo. Friends seem to be telling their friends to go with PS4.. just like how 360 started. I don't see that changing anytime soon from now until launch even if MS PR stops digging a deeper hole for themselves.
Exactly!
And for this reason, I think MS would be lucky to only lose 50% of their userbase. It's not as though xbox gamers aren't talking to each other and many of us are pissed and switching platforms.
Any one of these polls might not be providing an accurate prediction, but the overall direction is the same, is MS is losing a sizable chunk of their userbase while Sony is not. Many of these xbox gamers will defect to Sony, others might go PC only, and some will stay. Bottom line though is the decisions made in xbox division for xbone are driving away gamers, not gaining as these polls indicate.
Microsoft's bet is that sharing your games with 10 friends is a better deal than losing half the cost of a game to trade-in value to GameStop. If you never trade in games, the former is a FAR better deal than the latter.
I've also bought far more games digitally in the past 6 months than I've ever bought new in stores. And with Sony, those games have zero sharing rights. Maybe I am weird in that I am anti-disk. I don't want to lose a game because a piece of plastic broke. I don't want to have to manage a bunch of cases, I want to be able to download my game to any system I have access to. I find that to be far more flexible in a future where fast Internet *should* be everywhere.
I think both companies have enough sales data that shows sales generate revenue. Far Cry 3 and Tomb Raider are on sale now for $21 on PSN. For reasonably new games, that's a good deal. Had you bought a new game from GameStop at $60 and traded it in for $35, you absolutely wouldn't have come out ahead in that transaction (PSN deal costs me less and I keep the game permanently). It seems some people are just really terrible at math which is why I don't care for used games.
I've also bought far more games digitally in the past 6 months than I've ever bought new in stores. And with Sony, those games have zero sharing rights. Maybe I am weird in that I am anti-disk. I don't want to lose a game because a piece of plastic broke. I don't want to have to manage a bunch of cases, I want to be able to download my game to any system I have access to. I find that to be far more flexible in a future where fast Internet *should* be everywhere.
I think both companies have enough sales data that shows sales generate revenue. Far Cry 3 and Tomb Raider are on sale now for $21 on PSN. For reasonably new games, that's a good deal. Had you bought a new game from GameStop at $60 and traded it in for $35, you absolutely wouldn't have come out ahead in that transaction (PSN deal costs me less and I keep the game permanently). It seems some people are just really terrible at math which is why I don't care for used games.
Prophecy2k
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Sony had a great opportunity and went for it. MS screwed up royally with the price!
The XB1 is £429 here in the UK. I bought my launch PS3 for £425, which at the time was the US equivalent of £599 according to Sony.
This issue isn't, "why did Sony leave money on the table", as that's far too short sighted. The real issue is, when both these consoles were clearly designed from the outset for profitability and a lower launch retail price than past generations (see modest HW designs, with APUs over discrete chips), why did MS decide to price their console as if it were providing a box with a standard 10x generational increase in performance (i.e. 2.5+TFlops)?
Sony clearly designed a box to be more affordable than PS3 at launch with PS4. They were conscious of price as well as ease of development with their console archetecture. Sure they went balls to the walls on GDDR5 ram, but they were only able to because they knew they would still be on track for retailing at their target price after going a slight more modest on their main processing silicon design.
It just seems to me that Sony and MS designed boxes to launch and retail at $350-$400, and then MS for some unknown reason decided to retail at $100 more. Whether that was a function of poor yields due to eSRAM, and a decision to eat the cost of the defective chips, pricing high to mitigate the sunk costs somewhat, I can only speculate (;-)). I just think that something is certainly telling when a company decides to retail a piece of HW $100 more than its direct competitor, who has better specs and by all acounts should have been more expensive (8GB GDDR5 anyone?).
steveOrino
Regular
Sony is clearly going for the US market which is very very price sensitive. Getting that initial adoption rate so those early adopters can recommend them to their friends is going to be critical.
Which is why this move from MS is so mind boggling. The vast majority of early adopters are always going to be core feature set buyers (games). Convincing people to pay 100 bucks more for additional functionality NOT related to core feature sets is a tough sell. Always has been.
Which is why this move from MS is so mind boggling. The vast majority of early adopters are always going to be core feature set buyers (games). Convincing people to pay 100 bucks more for additional functionality NOT related to core feature sets is a tough sell. Always has been.
Johnny Awesome
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If Sony doesn't have a massive number of units, they made a mistake.
The fact of the matter is that Sony felt they needed to be $100 cheaper.
I also thought it was very interesting how well the Xbox One did in the Gamespot Best of E3.
MS has the games to sell out of Xbox One this holiday. They don't need to be at $399.
If I'm wrong and Sony has twice as many units available so that they can take advantage of networking effects before game sharing takes off on Xbox One, then Sony was smart, if not - epic fail.
The fact of the matter is that Sony felt they needed to be $100 cheaper.
I also thought it was very interesting how well the Xbox One did in the Gamespot Best of E3.
MS has the games to sell out of Xbox One this holiday. They don't need to be at $399.
If I'm wrong and Sony has twice as many units available so that they can take advantage of networking effects before game sharing takes off on Xbox One, then Sony was smart, if not - epic fail.
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Sony is continuing their "good will" marketing campaign that began with the initial design of ps4.
Regardless of whether they could have sold the initial batch for $500 or $700, the fact that they came out at $400 means that core gamers can tell their friends "hey great experiences on ps4 and it'll only cost $400 - $100 cheaper than xbox" ... That's another convert.
At the same price, I think there would still be a huge defection of xbox gamers, but $100 below makes it easier to bring their friends into the fold as well (even if it's difficult to get/sold-out).
Johnny Awesome
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It's all supply related. Sony better have a lot more units than MS.
The other thing I've been meaning to talk about is this: All of this stuff has been focus-group tested.
We think we know a lot on these forums, but the bottom line is that MS and Sony know their audience pretty well. They spend millions every year figuring that out.
Now, it's likely the DRM thing was an unexpected twist for MS, but the $499 price, TV, Kinect 2, 33% weaker hardware, etc... they've done a lot of research on that stuff and I doubt any of it are actually mistakes.
Same goes for Sony. They probably knew they needed to be at $399 for the cheaper demographic they are targeting.
The other thing I've been meaning to talk about is this: All of this stuff has been focus-group tested.
We think we know a lot on these forums, but the bottom line is that MS and Sony know their audience pretty well. They spend millions every year figuring that out.
Now, it's likely the DRM thing was an unexpected twist for MS, but the $499 price, TV, Kinect 2, 33% weaker hardware, etc... they've done a lot of research on that stuff and I doubt any of it are actually mistakes.
Same goes for Sony. They probably knew they needed to be at $399 for the cheaper demographic they are targeting.
Not to get too far off topic, but I'll just say this:
Did the same group at MS do the focus group testing telling them that Zune would be a success? How about Kin? Surface? Vista? Windows8? WebTV?
Either MS research in this department sucks, or Suits don't listen to their results.
(see the results of the op poll along with every other game related ps4 v xbone poll)
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Yeah there's no science to discretionary purchases like consoles or tablets.
Hard to trump price. At first, other tablet makers priced their tablets at the same price or even higher than the iPad, because they had things like USB ports and SD card slots. Those didn't sell.
It wasn't until Amazon and Google sold tablets practically at cost that Android tablets started to sell in numbers.
Hard to trump price. At first, other tablet makers priced their tablets at the same price or even higher than the iPad, because they had things like USB ports and SD card slots. Those didn't sell.
It wasn't until Amazon and Google sold tablets practically at cost that Android tablets started to sell in numbers.
Although true in absolute terms, how does PS3 compare to PS2 relative to price?
Johnny Awesome
Veteran
The funny thing is that most of those products were successful, just not according to some analysts.
Johnny Awesome
Veteran
Well, there actually IS a science to it. I'm glad you don't work in marketing where I work.
Well, there actually IS a science to it. I'm glad you don't work in marketing where I work.
*/Off-topic
Indeed, but in rapidly advancing fields, it takes a combination of focus group testing and visionary leadership. A successful company would combine both in iteration through the life of the product while also keeping in mind their competition.
As is, MS is acting as if they are in a vacuum when nothing could be further from the truth.
Off-topic/*
Will investors, publishers and senior management be happy if the XB1 enjoys the same level of success as all those products?
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