No one is saying that at all.
The results of this generation are both a testament to great design and understanding of the market by Sony and gigantic mis calculation of the market by MS. The two go hand in hand.
I think this is fair. I just dont subscribe to the view that the market was Xbox's for the taking and if they had a better reveal, they would of continued to dominate.
Clearly that exact line of thinking is what caused Microsofts troubles in the first place.
There is no one factor in these machines success or failure. Ive ofter believed in practise, people are far more open to an Always online console than they think, so saying it was because of that in isolation without looking at what was offered and communicated as an alterative is foolish.
Fact is Sony controlled the conversation from day one. Microsoft was always on the backfoot. To suggest that Sony just lucked out is to ignore the significant changes in design, marketing, enginerring, product management, ecosystem and value add ons Playstation have made from this generation compared to the last.
Even something as simple as annoucements and PR have taken a drastic change.
The Playstation brand reinvented itself this generation and you are being willfully blind to not see that. It might not be as good as system to the hardcore US target 18-30 demo as it should be, but as an overall business, they have gone from strength to strength.
Meanwhile Xbox, while on the right course now, has had to have a top down reorgainsation. It wasnt just a bad reveal, it was a bad production process from conception to implimentation. Using Cosmics insight only further compounds this. The fact that such a fundamental change to the way of doing business was approved and annouced without careful consultation with both suppliers (publishers) and customers (retailers) shows a business that had lost sense of purpose, direction and had ineffectual leadership.
So yes, the Xbox one reveal was massively harmful to future sales of the console, but it was a symptom of a far greater disease, one its direct competitor had made sure it was both vaccinated against and prepared to eradicate entirely. To simply suggest that if the console was revealed in way that was better recieved, everything would be different ignores alot of hard work and is incredibly, in my view, disingenious.
I have no idea who old NPD_George was but believe it or not some major businesses like to read Sales GAFs debates lol. There's some good analysis posted in some of these threads.
Well, as my last post on the subject, thats what got NPD_George into trouble in the first place, first place being previous account. Just because NPD had a change of heart since doesnt mean its not still a sticking point in my view. Who is to say that Microsoft, who is willfully obsuring their numbers might start taking exception to someone clarifying things here, where it spreads elsewhere? Im a bit rusty on my GAF history but im pretty sure that was one of the reasons for the lockdown in the first place (not by Microsoft however). Just not worth it.