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

[Rangers]

i expect the real ratio is anywhere from 10-20% DE. Just pulled that from my butt but it feels about right, based on how fast each was selling out of preorders and just common sense.

I dont see any reason to bash Sony for it, I'm a free market capitalist. Shortages only happen when something is artificially underpriced. The PS5 non DE is underpriced relative to demand too, but less so. So basically it's Sony's way of raising the ASP. For now, who know what happens later on. In six months or a year when costs lower and demand settles the DE could be a important part of their strategy. It's interesting to note, though.

I kind of wonder if it's true MS loses more on the XSS if MS might do the same with limiting XSS supply, albeit it feels like it would be to a lesser extent. They probably aren't that smart though

 

[GuestLV]

Even if they have to pay the increased price for those games? Im all for digital, but paying 10 to 20 dollars more per game is abit odd. Then theres no resale value either.

Edit: Or did they increase the price for disc based games too?

How I understood here in Eastern Europe ,triple A games will cost 80Eur. And I mean disc versions ,because poor Sony still have no time to make PSN Store available in all EU countries ,lags behind MS ,Apple ,Google etc.
I'm wonder, how i could buy Pascals Wager on Android for about 4eur and have so much fun.

 

[Unknown Soldier]

Gears Tactics 80% https://www.metacritic.com/game/pc/gears-tactics
Wasteland 3 86% https://www.metacritic.com/game/pc/wasteland-3
Minecraft Dungeons 70% https://www.metacritic.com/game/pc/minecraft-dungeons

i can't find flight simulator for some reason but these are all solid to great games.

What did sony release this year ? TLOU2 which i think has a 96% and Ghost of Tsuhima which is sitting at a 83% ? Iron man vr at 73%

I find it funny that you posted the PC reviews for the games while all the Sony games are clearly console. Flight Sim is not releasing on console afaik. Gears Tactic isn't out yet for XBONE from what I see.

https://www.metacritic.com/game/xbox-one/gears-tactics

 

[zed]

I dont see any reason to bash Sony for it, I'm a free market capitalist. Shortages only happen when something is artificially underpriced. The PS5 non DE is underpriced relative to demand too, but less so. So basically it's Sony's way of raising the ASP. For now, who know what happens later on. In six months or a year when costs lower and demand settles the DE could be a important part of their strategy. It's interesting to note, though.

Yes it makes sense to minimize the loss

Also This may be a far out thought but its an idea, I dont know if it makes sense but bear with me

Perhaps, the early adopters are also the more hardcore gamers, that generally will want the best machine
Does this sound plausible?

Now if this is the case why would a company produce more of the shittier machine?
The demand at the start is for the better machine.

How many people here want the xbox one S over the xbox X?
(crickets) one hand slowly goes up in the back "well ive only got $299"

 

[chris1515]

Yes it makes sense to minimize the loss

Also This may be a far out thought but its an idea, I dont know if it makes sense but bear with me

Perhaps, the early adopters are also the more hardcore gamers, that generally will want the best machine
Does this sound plausible?

Now if this is the case why would a company produce more of the shittier machine?
The demand at the start is for the better machine.

How many people here want the xbox one S over the xbox X?
(crickets) one hand slowly goes up in the back "well ive only got $299"

There was a big survey more than 138k people and 12.8% wanted to buy the PS5 DE much less than PS5 standard edition.

 

[HBRU]

If the delta between sale price and today's BOM is big (and negative) is normal that product doesn't come so easily to customers... TMSC has different customers that wants the 7nm+ production... so it's not cheap.

 

[cheapchips]

Spencer's comments on the One launch from the Fast Company design article were interesting.

We’d started out in the [2013] holiday doing well. There was so much pent-up demand that our supply was outstripped. You come out of the gate and everyone is selling out of what they can make,” says Spencer. “Then in the next year you see the natural trajectory of where you’re going and the competition is going.

This probably holds true this time around as well (for both Sony and MS).

https://www.fastcompany.com/9055121...soft-unveils-affordable-design-for-the-masses

 

[liams]

I find it funny that you posted the PC reviews for the games while all the Sony games are clearly console. Flight Sim is not releasing on console afaik. Gears Tactic isn't out yet for XBONE from what I see.

https://www.metacritic.com/game/xbox-one/gears-tactics

Gears tactics is a xbox launch title and flight sim is coming to console at some point but we don't have a release date for it yet

 

[Daozang]

The good thing about all this, from a PC guys perspective, is that I don't need to buy a console at launch.
The only thing that will determine if I need to spend money will be the 2080 performance in Cyberpunk!
Sony could have had me, with a few PS5 exclusives that leverage the hardware.
I'm sure they'll manage to convince me down the line.

 

[eastmen]

I find it funny that you posted the PC reviews for the games while all the Sony games are clearly console. Flight Sim is not releasing on console afaik. Gears Tactic isn't out yet for XBONE from what I see.

https://www.metacritic.com/game/xbox-one/gears-tactics

I said xbox platform. I played all those games through xbox . I played some on my phone , some on my surface , some on an xbox and some on my pc. All though xbox. Flight Sim is releasing on console in the future https://www.digitaltrends.com/gaming/microsoft-flight-simulator-console/. Gears tactics is nov 10th for console https://www.xboxachievements.com/ne...ing-to-Xbox-Series-X/S-as-a-Launch-Title.html

Oh I can add age of empires 3 to the list since its coming out in Nov also. playing the beta was so much fun. we keep moving foward

I did not say MS lied, this is not me saying it. I say that MS have less critical and popular games. This is a true and generation began long before this year. I talk about the current generation. At the end they were trounced by Sony and they have less critically acclaim games from 2013 to 2020.

This is marketing each year Phil Spencer told this is the best games Xbox ever released and this is not true. Sony and Microsoft are company trying to sell us a product. They aren't our friend at all.

I find the way Sony hide some games are cross gen and the rise of game price not good at all. After I will buy a PS5 because I think this is the place where the game I want to play will be and I am fully digital and I have a backlog and PS plus collection means I can play three or four games I did not buy like Days Gone, Persona 5 and so on.

Each people have different taste. Gears Tactics and Flight Simulator don't interest me at all.

Sorry that was from the first post i quoted. THe generation is long and things change. At the start of the generation Ms had a lot of ip while sony released little and in the middle of the generation sony started to release a lot of content while ms slowed down. Now we are seeing a year in which ms has already released a ton of content.

There is so much available on the xbox platform and yet we get the same tired speil about the xbox being a forza , halo , gears box. Meanwhile the big thing from the playstation show the other day is god of war 6 . Thats 6 god of war titles. People don't complain because they enjoy games. Just like fans of those xbox games don't complain either.

 

[see colon]

The good thing about all this, from a PC guys perspective, is that I don't need to buy a console at launch.
The only thing that will determine if I need to spend money will be the 2080 performance in Cyberpunk!
Sony could have had me, with a few PS5 exclusives that leverage the hardware.
I'm sure they'll manage to convince me down the line.

You and me...Same boat. This may be the first generation I don't jump into in the first year since SNES.

 

[eastmen]

i expect the real ratio is anywhere from 10-20% DE. Just pulled that from my butt but it feels about right, based on how fast each was selling out of preorders and just common sense.

I dont see any reason to bash Sony for it, I'm a free market capitalist. Shortages only happen when something is artificially underpriced. The PS5 non DE is underpriced relative to demand too, but less so. So basically it's Sony's way of raising the ASP. For now, who know what happens later on. In six months or a year when costs lower and demand settles the DE could be a important part of their strategy. It's interesting to note, though.

I kind of wonder if it's true MS loses more on the XSS if MS might do the same with limiting XSS supply, albeit it feels like it would be to a lesser extent. They probably aren't that smart though

I'm not bashing. I just amazed if its as low as 10%. It makes sense on sonys end you get to advertise the $400 price point while not loosing money or as much money on it. Its what MS is doing with the XSS. People will see the new xbox at $300 and head to the store and either buy it or see the higher end xsx and jump to that price point

 

[goonergaz]

The sequels to some of the largest AAA games this generation is important, and the possibility of God of War also following this trend. Sure it's not all the titles. But it's certainly makes up the critical titles.


I personally don't have a horse in the race, so my feelings on what Sony did are generally somewhat muted. The position I'm taking is not about whether Sony did or did not intentionally mislead their customers, but ultimately if their customer base were misled.

This event in review; critical platform information about the sequels to the largest IPs for Sonys 1p exclusives was completely with held from the public until the day of pre-orders, and even then Sony did not officially make those announcements through an official channel, but an unofficial one. We can't expect the whole world to get critical news about platform exclusivity on a per title basis through twitter, there was no indication during the show that this was happening, so even myself was surprised to see this. They have yet to update any of their promotional materials for SM:MM and H:TFW that it's coming to PS4.

I really don't know why things played out the way they did, I'll leave it at that. I don't own a PS4, so none of this bothers me as much as some others. But I would debate to death the topic whether people were misled. Platform information was withheld and dumped right on pre-order day through an unofficial channel; why?I do not care, intent? I do not care. I only know that games made for PS4 and PS5 have to be done in parallel, so it's clear that everyone including developers and Sony knew this was going to play out and happen in exactly this way.

I agree that PS5 was likely to sell out anyway. So I don't know why they did it. They just did.

Does it matter? It’s a pre-order, you can cancel.

The blog is 1 sentence buried. It's there sure, but it's not up and front.
It should have been in the presentation. or they should have updated their youtube video:

Why? Sony are saying they have a big game coming out, it’s coming out on their current and next gen consoles...surely you only need to specify if there’s a limitation in what the game will play on?

Conversely we have “no one gets left behind” leaving people behind.

 

[iroboto]

Why? Sony are saying they have a big game coming out, it’s coming out on their current and next gen consoles...surely you only need to specify if there’s a limitation in what the game will play on?

Conversely we have “no one gets left behind” leaving people behind.

I have my gripes with MS, but that's a different topic. I'm only addressing whether people were misled and thus entitled to those feelings. It's not about whether it's the right thing to do or not.

Sony could have said nothing really, presented things as is, and it would have been fine. Was there an advantage to doing it this way that I'm missing?

 

[goonergaz]

No advantage because (as I said) we’re still 2 months out so plenty of time to change minds

 

[function]

Why? Sony are saying they have a big game coming out, it’s coming out on their current and next gen consoles...surely you only need to specify if there’s a limitation in what the game will play on?

Conversely we have “no one gets left behind” leaving people behind.

When did MS say that about next gen consoles? I know they said it about the X1/S when the X1X came out, and it turned out to be completely true. But when did they say it regarding next gen?

 

[AbsoluteBeginner]

I can see MS introducing DE verison of XSX in a years time, once supply chain and prices go down, and then drop XSS to $249 by the mid 2022 at latest. PS6 will come with its on "Polaris".

 

[goonergaz]

When did MS say that about next gen consoles? I know they said it about the X1/S when the X1X came out, and it turned out to be completely true. But when did they say it regarding next gen?

Oh yes, it was “We won’t force you to upgrade to Xbox Series X at launch to play Xbox exclusives”.

https://www.theverge.com/2020/7/23/21335984/microsoft-xbox-series-x-exclusive-next-gen-promise

 

[Barrabas]

Pre order and pre payed a PS5 disc version today here in Norway for 5899 NOK (about 650$). Stock was ripped away shortly after. Both versions nowhere to be found now.

 

[eastmen]

anyone know the power consumption on these consoles yet ?