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

I think if a console has the risk of failing, it's the Series X. $299 is a great price, and price and convenience are king. I understand the "$100 more and you get a PS5" argument, but $100 is a lot of money to a lot of people. That's a game and a half or 6 months of gamepass ultimate. The same argument can be made for the digital only PS5. If the difference between PS5 and Series X isn't noticeable, why would you spend $100 extra for the same experience. This is all assuming you can live without a disc drive.
 
MS has price parity with the feature comparable version of a weaker system and a budget friendly option for people who don't care as much about power and all of these systems are likely to be supply constrained as it is. Why would they make another sku close to launch when they're going to sell out of devices anyway? It's literally throwing money away.

After stock has stabilized, maybe it makes sense to fill out that price point but honestly I'm not really sure how big of a deal it is. It's only if sales of the XSS aren't good enough that it'd feel like a necessary move. If they've got volume with the lower cost device, they don't need to reduce margin on the (no pun intended) halo product.

Much like the One X never sold nearly as well as the One S, the XSX doesn't need to be a volume product if the XSS is.
 
I think if a console has the risk of failing, it's the Series X. $299 is a great price, and price and convenience are king. I understand the "$100 more and you get a PS5" argument, but $100 is a lot of money to a lot of people. That's a game and a half or 6 months of gamepass ultimate. The same argument can be made for the digital only PS5. If the difference between PS5 and Series X isn't noticeable, why would you spend $100 extra for the same experience. This is all assuming you can live without a disc drive.

I don't think the xsx will fail. How would it ? Its going to have the best version of all multiplatform games.

I think for ms it goes xss $300 / xsx $500 , they will most likely drop $100 each by 2024 when xss 2 and xsx 2 come out and the xss and xsx go bye bye. For MS they will just keep rolling the games forward. That XSS owner who wants 4k now but at the same small foot print ? well you get the xss 2 . That xsx gamer who wants more games at 4k with less upscaling ? Well that dynamic res will keep those old games locked at 4k on the XSX 2 and oh well we have skipped foward a few generations of amd's product stack so now that sparse ray tracing ? well the new games will start adding more of it if you have the new versions of the console. Oh and your going on a trip ? Just stream the game to your surface duo 4 and use the usb c to hdmi cable to put it on your tv in your hotel.

That is the future MS is going towards. It will be interesting to see if sony goes that way also. Nintendo is already on its way. You grab your switch and play on on the go or put it on a dock and play on your tv. Crazy how similar but how diffrent that is compared to ms
 
Can you imagine how tiny the Series S Slim will be. It'll look like an Ouya.
XSS is really a nice product. At 199 will sell so much to kids (but not only). Also at 299 is a good starter (249 would be better). XSX is a more serious product... also because of size. I like it but maybe someone not much. A leaner (a bit cheaper) XSXde will come for sure....
 
I think if a console has the risk of failing, it's the Series X. $299 is a great price, and price and convenience are king. I understand the "$100 more and you get a PS5" argument, but $100 is a lot of money to a lot of people. That's a game and a half or 6 months of gamepass ultimate. The same argument can be made for the digital only PS5. If the difference between PS5 and Series X isn't noticeable, why would you spend $100 extra for the same experience. This is all assuming you can live without a disc drive.

Xbox One was cheaper than Ps4 most of this gen.

299 Switch heavily outsells 199 Switch Lite.

Any polls I've seen online upwards of 80% are choosing the XSX vs XSS.

IMO the storage issues alone make XSS a probably non starter (cant wait til the Resetera thread about how it only has 380GB Available out of the box or whatever awful thing it's going to be after formatting/OS)

Here is a random poll I saw tonight (this is tech/phone youtuber not affiliated with any consoles)

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The XSX feature that I find mostly i s interesting is the ML HDR+4K auto-upscaling of old titles... I have tons of superb old titles to play and I want to play them at best. Not sure about the results... but it looks very promising.
 
399 for digital version but then they up the price of games. Thats aside from digital games being more expensive then disc based ones.
 
I'm impressed that both Sony and Microsoft are launching without any next gen titles. Sony get a bit more pizazz out of a very HD remaster of a much loved PS3 game.

I still want faster loading so I'm sold on something at some point. :)

Demon soul's, Destruction All stars don't have PS4 version.
 
Demon soul's, Destruction All stars don't have PS4 version.

Demon's S'oul's' is the very HD remaster that I was referring to. It looks great and I think it was a good move by Sony. It's still the same game though isn't it?

Forgot about Destruction All Stars. I don't feel so bad for doing so since Sony did last night as well. ;)
 
Demon's S'oul's' is the very HD remaster that I was referring to. It looks great and I think it was a good move by Sony. It's still the same game though isn't it?

Forgot about Destruction All Stars. I don't feel so bad for doing so since Sony did last night as well. ;)


He explains well the situation. The problem is the communication, Microsoft was honest at least. But Sony marketing guy are clever, setup the preorder just after the conference.;)
 
They should have been honest from the beginning about focussing on cross gen for 2 to 3 years. Forbidden west isn't a launch game either, its due for after the summer 2021.

https://www.resetera.com/threads/ji...portant-to-us-for-three-or-four-years.288185/

"Yes, but still, usually we got crossgen titles for at least a year, so Microsoft and Sony will be in the same situation at the end. So PR talk are PR talk, both sides. - Mr Roger Moot (@MrM00t) "
 
They should have been honest from the beginning about focussing on cross gen for 2 to 3 years. Forbidden west isn't a launch game either, its due for after the summer 2021.

https://www.resetera.com/threads/ji...portant-to-us-for-three-or-four-years.288185/

I take a bet it will release before, same than the PS5 SSD being more than 7 GB/s. And it is not because the PS4 will live three years after PS5 launch than it means they will release cross gen first party games for a long time. Some games like Demon Soul's or Destruction all Stars don't have PS4 version. Horizon or Sackboy began as PS4 games.
 
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I take a bet it will release before, same than the PS5 SSD being more than 7 GB/s. And it is not because the PS4 will live three years after PS5 launch than it means they will release cross gen first party games for a long times. Some games like Demon Soul's or Destruction all Stars don't have PS4 version. Horizon or Sackboy began as PS4 games.

Look, it's not that much different to what MS is doing, it's just different strategies in marketing. I think the whole ordeal with MS was about two years of cross gen. Seems not so much different to Sony, it seems like 2022 will start true PS5 next gen only games.
Demon souls doesn't differ all that much from say FW or spiderman i think graphically their ballpark same level. It's a remaster to begin with.

Ratchet is slated for 'somewhere 2021', but again do those graphics look so much better then FWs? I give it the fast loading though.

Yes Sony still does (somewhat) better in delivering regarding non-cross gen games, but they arent worlds apart either (sony and ms) in this regard.
 
Both companies PR hasn't been good at all regarding some items:

- MS
-- Confusing console games. Xbox Series X, Xbox Series S, Xbox One S, Xbox One X.
-- No games shown running on hardware
-- Some average looking major exclusives
-- Differences between budget and premium console not easy to understand for the average user.

- Sony
-- Services not clear.
-- 1st party game platforms not clear
-- Mess during the preorder
-- 3rd party exclusives not clear
 
Both companies PR hasn't been good at all regarding some items:

- MS
-- Confusing console games. Xbox Series X, Xbox Series S, Xbox One S, Xbox One X.
-- No games shown running on hardware
-- Some average looking major exclusives
-- Differences between budget and premium console not easy to understand for the average user.

- Sony
-- Services not clear.
-- 1st party game platforms not clear
-- Mess during the preorder
-- 3rd party exclusives not clear

Yes i was critizing sony more then MS there, but i think both are 'meh' regarding next generation consoles and games. Atleast in comparison to previous generations where we had true huge leaps in graphics and new IP's.
 
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