Pretty much the only thing keeping on me on Sony consoles is their first and second party studios. If those studios were with Microsoft, I'd own an Xbox One now. It's a crazy notion, I know, but I go where the games I like are
How can you possible buy (insert one console brand here) when (insert other console brand here) is the same price? You are mad I say, mad! Don't you know that your console is inferior at (insert useless metric here) and that no real core gamer would ever do what you do? I mean who buys a console for games anyways when (insert another useless metric here) is better on the other console?
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But how many people buying a gaming console live in such a gaming news vacuum?
Ok so assume everyone is informed and everyone knows that the xb1 is weaker. Strange how for example my bro-in-law's family have no clue about any of this since they don't read any of this stuff as they are busy with life and kids, but let's just assume it's true for the sake of argument. If that's the case then why is anyone still buying an xb1 at all?
This often spouted data comparing the One to 360 from eight years ago has to be the most useless metric I have seen in a long time.
I don't get this at all. Why is it useless? They sold their product at the maximum price they could and have a profit from day one, something that is so rarely ever done in the console world. That's a victory and let them outpace their previous console sales as well. Now that sales drop, simply drop price. Are people really suggesting they should have instead sold the first few million consoles at a loss at $399 instead of at a profit at $499 as they did? They did the right thing and priced it right, resulting in the first time a console has been able to launch without a loss in years. They tried a new idea by bundling an expensive item, sold it at a profit, sales slowed down and/or 3rd party support was nil, they changed plans and dropped price and that expensive item, now we see what happens. Goodness it's not over, it's been only 6 months!
Sony lost their audience. Why do you think MS won't lose theirs?
Because they moved quickly on price when it was needed, and because their product isn't crap to begin with.
The launch number are nigh meaningless. I can't believe this needs to be reiterated. Wi U sold way faster than XB360 and PS3, yet that 6 month total launch number wasn't any indication that it'd sell as well as them. The trends after launch sales are what matters, and XB1 isn't in a great place, selling at least 3:1 down worldwide against PS4 and with few arguments to sway non-partisan consumers in its favour.
Speaking of meaningless, Wii U are meaningless as a basis for comparison because the market for Wii U has moved on to other devices. It would be like saying look that manufacturer of the car that runs on steam had poor sales. Well yeah, because people moved on to gas powered cars. Wii U was doomed from the start.
Brand loyalty and 100 lines of resolution is not the issue. Brand loyalty means people will buy a console irrespective - nothing much Sony nor MS can do about that (loyalty is theirs to lose). The issue is the mainstream looking for a COD box, who doesn't give a shit about brand. The sorts of people who buy a TV on price and looks and what the salesman tells them and what the picture looks like, and not whether its an LG or Panny or Sony or Sammy because of brand loyalty. The sorts of people for whom the 'console wars' don't exist. Their major influences will be media and word-of-mouth, price and obvious features, every one of which PS4 is generally stronger on and can only get stronger on if sales snowball.
Sure, so why is this all negative for the xb1? You guys act as if everywhere you go there's people hiding around the corner warning people to not buy an xb1. I see lots of positive articles, and lots of articles on cool games coming out for it, I mean do articles on games not matter anymore? On websites that are not strictly about gaming the news is far more positive about the xb1 than it is for the ps4 because the ps4 ultimately is viewed as just another boring game box whereas MS are going for more with the xb1. Things like future unification of apps and services across all MS devices is seen as a huge positive on such websites although largely ignored on gaming websites and forums like this one. Why does that not count?
The problem is, Joker, is that you're effectively lumping in all gamers outthere into a singular entity called "core-gamer". They are not. The market is big and diverse. Not everyone buys a console for the same reasons.
Right which is why when someone posted "Why would you buy a $399 xb1 over a $399 ps4", I replied that was silly. That's how this all started. A comment like that implies people buy a product purely on stats alone, and we know that's not the case, it never has been in the console world.
...but we still ended up getting a PS because we like the games the platform has always offered. I think there's a strong tie between many PS owners and the games that have been offered generation after generation.
I'm simplifying your quote to the above, because I'm struggling to see why the above doesn't apply to Xbox. Again when someone posts "Why would you buy a $399 xb1 over a $399 ps4", why does everything you said not apply to xbox and only apply to playstation?
...2 products were released simultaneously and people had a choice and they chose
They chose the cheaper one, not exactly a huge surprise when one product was touching the $500 mark which for consoles is extremely high. Ps3, 3d0 and Neo Geo showed us that there is a price limit the average user is willing to pay for a console. In any case now they are priced the same. So once again when it's said "Why would you buy a $399 xb1 over a $399 ps4", how does that make any sense? Yeah MS tried something new when they launched, sold millions at a profit but they can't get the price down low enough and it seems like support is lacking so it's time to eject the expensive part. Now you have two largely similar machines at the same price, each with their respective brands and some unique future features but apparently I'm to understand that no one would buy one $399 model over the other $399 model. I still think that line of thinking is silly.
