Hold on.. am I in the twilight zone or something?
- We have all guesstimated that the XB1 did over 50M lifetime. Or better put, was outsold by the PS4 by 2 to 1. That would mean if the PS4 did 120M, then our projections were that the XB1 did 60M. So why is this 58M surprising anyone when its been the common consensus that the PS4 won by 2 to 1.
- Am I the only one that notices that 58M in 7 years, averages out to around 8M consoles sold per year? And that's impressive?
- Or that at its current 21M sales, it tracking at around the same 8M sales per year from the previous generation.
I don't know..I am trying to see how any of this is good. I mean, for me, coming from the OG Xbox to the 360... now that was good. They gained market share. Went from seeing 24M consoles to seeing 85M+ in the 360. But going from the 360 to the XB1, they lost market share... and now they are tracking similarly... how is this a good thing? Is this like giving someone an also participated trophy? A celebration in mediocrity? Or like that gif where that guy that comes third celebrates harder than first and second.
What am I missing here? So basically, if the XSX consoles do like 50-60M... it would be considered a success?
1: Because PS4 didn't do 120 million...it did closer to 117.2 million. And the estimates prior to this were always "about 2:1", never exactly 2:1. In fact some said "by more than 2:1" for PS4, meaning it was realistic to have XBO estimates between 50-55 million, too.
2: Because it's not 8 million per year. Consoles have a curve where in the middle years sales explode, then peak, then gradually drop off. There are exceptions like the Wii, but otherwise all other consoles follow this model where in the second third of their lifecycle you see sales exponentially increase and then peak, then in the final third they ease down before dropping more heavily in the last year or two.
3: Except that's not what's actually happening here. XBS is tracking at OG Xbox levels, not XBO levels. OG Xbox did around 6.2 million in its 3rd year on the market. If these numbers are right and Ampere's 19.5 million sold-through by EOY '22 are correct, then XBS has only moved 2 million units globally in the past six months.
That is, quite frankly, abysmal. At the way things are tracking, XBS will be lucky to reach 50 million lifetime (if it continues following OG Xbox trajectories then next year it would do less than 6.2 million, for example, or would reach that point by 2025) and that's with an extra year on the market compared to 8th gen. MS wouldn't be seeing declines gen-over-gen like this if they were running Xbox more competently.
…and, again, we see that the total potential market is not increasing in size.
IMO, MS is right to chase the market outside of just gaming. The potential there is huge, while there is simply no room for growth as it stands beyond raising prices and achieving a greater attach rate, which seem to be Sony's strategies.
Microsoft's problem is that they think they need the market to grow in absolute user count to grow revenue...this is not inherently true. If they offered more content and quality in their current ecosystems that customers would feel justified more of a cost for, they could increase their revenue and profit margins with the relative same pool of customers. Nintendo and Sony have managed to do this, but somehow Microsoft cannot?
A company has to have a balance between increasing ARPU of current customers and reaching out to new customers. If MS were doing things correctly they wouldn't see customer bleed turning over to Sony & Nintendo as new customers of those products (at the expense of being customers of Xbox); they be able to retain those customers even
IF they also became Sony and/or Nintendo customers, too.
