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

No commercials on TV?

Preorders cover all launch inventory so no need to advertise?

 

There are ps5 ads for sure.

 

A lot of european countries are going on lockdown again so its highly unlikely there will be lines in the stores

 

'click and collect' could still happen in the UK. So it'd just be a very long, spaced out queue.

 

I suspect the stock allocations will ensure a pretty small queue

Semi /s

 

Yeah, due to COVID there won't be crazy action in the shops anymore.

But personally I think Playstation does not even the marketing anymore - it is forming a cult around itself due to success after the success - similarly to Apple. So people will buy consoles anyway.

 

It has been this way since the PS2. Atleast here in EU.

 

Yeah, true. I do wonder though what can MS do to compete with Sony in Europe.

 

Nothing. It is that easy, thats why MS aint trying to compete in the traditional console hardware way anymore. Gamepass is basically their 'console', XSX, XSS, PC, mobile are ways to enjoy their 'service' and games. The advantage of this is that they can launch a new xbox every two years or so. The disadvantage is, well, they have to support a wide (r) range of platforms. Atleast, scaling does very well nowadays, even if those games wont be matching PS5 exclusives.

 

It will die out eventually anyway.

I don't think there will be that much difference in the games regardless of number the of the platform. I presume GDK will be eventually streamlined to the point where the games won't require a lot of changes or optimizations to run on various machines/xboxes. We are certainly moving from the era where the machines were very different.

 

What, the service gamepass, the xbox, or the playstation?

 

Traditional console hardware will become a niche thing in the future. It will probably exist as some form of ultra-premium but not necessary (especially if the game sizes will continue to increase that much - though again probably there will be a partial solution like - part of data on the disk, everything else stream from cloud until the installation/download completes).

Cloud streaming lacks two basic things - coverage and exposure.
Coverage because we need to provide access to the Internet to a vast amount of people. In some places, it is almost archaic for the modern age or is not even available - but delivering the internet to various areas will be easier than building transport infrastructure (sometimes it is due to monopolies).
Exposure because for a lot of people cloud streaming is still something slow, with huge input lag, etc. But as Control on Switch demonstrated - when people tried it they found out that all of it just works.

Essentially the question will arise - do we really need a separate machine if we can access everything everywhere?
PC won't go anywhere though - we will might not necessarily need gaming rigs in the future, but just like with the mobile phones - PC/laptop is the essential tool these days.

 

I just went to Game to pay for my Series X so I don't need to pay on the 10th as they will only doing collection and no sales unless things go very wrong.

The dirty teases brought out my actual boxed console and and scanned it through the till, I was less than social distancing from it (ignoring the plastic screen). I think it now gets its own labelled bag with a copy of my receipt and left in the stockroom locked away till the 10th.

Good luck to everyone else who needs to collect over a countries lockdown.

 

That's just filthy! What naughty, naughty staff.

 

You should have grabbed it and ran, and when the cops showed up, argue that you paid for it, and show them the receipt.

 

I wonder what the legalities of doing something like that are. If you paid for it, there is no crime? Asking for a friend.

 

I would imagine they would have to take you to court. That would take months. Depending on the laws to your country and locality, of course.

 

Yeah. There's more probably effort required supporting both NVidia and AMD on the PC platform than there is to supporting XSS and XSX.

 

I wonder if that effort can be somehow eased by leveraging DirectX? I have no idea how it works/worked but shouldn't it wrap over Nvidia/AMD specific API?

 

News from Game UK .. for XBSX/S and PS5 orders.