Remember that this marked the 15th month that the Xbox One was available for $349. It sold ~7.5m units already at this price point, with 5.2m of which being sold in the holidays (where the price dropped even further for certain periods of time).
It needs a price cut because the amount of people that would've bought an Xbox One for $349 has pretty much been sapped now.
Even then, January isn't the best month to determine the health of a console. The 360 got its first price cut in August 07, and January 2008 was down from Jan 07 (-22%), but then went on to be up YoY for every month in 2008 except for August (price cut month) and September (was Halo 3 month)
Expect the XB1 to be down YoY until the next price drop.
You could even get Xbox One for $300 the whole month of January at Amazon , Walmart & Best Buy (Price Match) or get a $30 gift card at Target & Gamestop. Xbox One being down YoY even with a cheaper price & Halo 5 out on the console seems really bad when there don't seem to be anything that's going to change the trend in the next few months besides The Division.
The problem is that with the data given you can't come to those conclusions. Imagine the distribution of game sales is like the following for Harcore, Normal, and Casual users where those terms denote the number of games the person buys.
Code:
P
X P P P
X P X P X P
X P X P X P
Hardcore Normal Casual
X = Xbox One User
P = PlayStation 4 User
Given such a distribution, the Average Revenue per Consoles Sold would be higher for the XB1 and lower for the PS4 because the PS4 has a bunch of extra Normal and Casual gamers bringing down the average. However the PS4 has just as many hardcore gamers as the XB1. This is not unusual because the Hardcore buys a console at release when it is most expensive. Over time as the price comes down more Normal and Casual gamers buy the console too. Because the PS4 has sold more consoles overall, it is likely that they would have more of these non-hardcore gamer in addition to the hardcore gamers that already bought the system.
Really, the only thing you can get from these numbers is that from the perspective of a game developer, you would expect the growth rate of your sales to be lower than they were right after the console was released. Once again this makes sense. When the console was released, the hardcore gamers bought it and the bought a lot of games to go along with it. As more consoles were sold there were more of these hardcore gamers willing to buy games. Now 2+ years after release, you've got bargain casual shoppers waiting for the console to go on sale. When they buy a console they are going to naturally by fewer games.
The problem with the VentureBeat article was that it tried to portray this natural occurrence as something bad for the PS4 and good for the XB1 when in reality if the XB1 sold as many consoles as the PS4 it would likely have a very similar revenue per consoles sold ratio.
Oh a totally agree. In the long run, the APU really means little as the PS4 will still sell more software per publisher just by value of sheer volume.
That said, when we move into targetting a platform for upselling DLC and season passes the Xbox users have proven they still hold a significant value that cannot be ignored.
Its no different from Nintendo saying "look, we know the WiiU sold like shit, but our hardcore fanbase will keep us profit because they will buy every amiibo going".
It is console war bait, but the logic is still sound.
In actuailty Its nothing to be proud of (or be offended by, for that matter).
You could even get Xbox One for $300 the whole month of January at Amazon , Walmart & Best Buy (Price Match) or get a $30 gift card at Target & Gamestop. Xbox One being down YoY even with a cheaper price & Halo 5 out on the console seems really bad when there don't seem to be anything that's going to change the trend in the next few months besides The Division.
The entire month at these retailers? I doubt that a lot. Also on Amazon, those $300 bundles are by third party retailers and being fulfilled by Amazon, not Amazon themselves selling them for $50 cheaper.
Also, Walmart.com has different pricing to actual retail Walmart, and the online stores are a very tiny percentage of retail. Does BestBuy price match retail products to those found on online stores?
Those gift card deals were not the entire month. That started near the end of the month for tax returns.
The entire month at these retailers? I doubt that a lot. Also on Amazon, those $300 bundles are by third party retailers and being fulfilled by Amazon, not Amazon themselves selling them for $50 cheaper.
Also, Walmart.com has different pricing to actual retail Walmart, and the online stores are a very tiny percentage of retail. Does BestBuy price match retail products to those found on online stores?
Those gift card deals were not the entire month. That started near the end of the month for tax returns.
The entire month at these retailers? I doubt that a lot. Also on Amazon, those $300 bundles are by third party retailers and being fulfilled by Amazon, not Amazon themselves selling them for $50 cheaper.
Also, Walmart.com has different pricing to actual retail Walmart, and the online stores are a very tiny percentage of retail. Does BestBuy price match retail products to those found on online stores?
Those gift card deals were not the entire month. That started near the end of the month for tax returns.
Those discount Xbox One's are sold by third parties on Amazon, not by Amazon themselves. If I'm reading that line right, those would not qualify for Best Buy's price match, and the same for Walmart as well.
Those discount Xbox One's are sold by third parties on Amazon, not by Amazon themselves. If I'm reading that line right, those would not qualify for Best Buy's price match.
Remember that this marked the 15th month that the Xbox One was available for $349. It sold ~7.5m units already at this price point, with 5.2m of which being sold in the holidays (where the price dropped even further for certain periods of time).
It needs a price cut because the amount of people that would've bought an Xbox One for $349 has pretty much been sapped now.
Even then, January isn't the best month to determine the health of a console. The 360 got its first price cut in August 07, and January 2008 was down from Jan 07 (-22%), but then went on to be up YoY for every month in 2008 except for August (price cut month) and September (was Halo 3 month)
Expect the XB1 to be down YoY until the next price drop.
I think XB1 has a very, VERY little Chance for be up YOY in March, with The Division Marketing and a week of Quantum Break Bundle.
236,000 is not easy to Sell at This Point, but who know. One thing is Sure, if in February 2016 XB1 Sell less than in March 2015, nope. No way, February is almost always bigger than March.
So far, i Say ~235,000 for XB1 in February and ~225,000 in March.
I think XB1 has a very, VERY little Chance for be up YOY in March, with The Division Marketing and a week of Quantum Break Bundle.
236,000 is not easy to Sell at This Point, but who know. One thing is Sure, if in February 2016 XB1 Sell less than in March 2015, nope. No way, February is almost always bigger than March.
So far, i Say ~235,000 for XB1 in February and ~225,000 in March.
Thanks. So it's more about a YoY thing than anything else. Makes sense. The number didn't seem as bad to me after the relatively strong performance they had in Nov and Dec.
I wonder if X1 will outsell PS4 at any point going forward. If Halo 5 couldn't do it then it stands to reason that Gears 4 won't be enough either.
many of the big guns are out though. core gaming market has expanded because online gaming took off, just compare ps2 games sales which has a similar user base to xbox 360/ps3 combined in 2014, you can see a big difference in games sales. i'm not surprised that both consoles nearly sold 60 million combined, i'm just surprised how much ps4 is dominating i expected it to win the gen by 20-30 million, not by double.
ps4 reaching 60 million of course is not by microsoft making a few mistakes, but of course it helps when you're competition messes up, just like it helped the 360 tremendously. sony is biggest console brand in gaming as long as they don't fuck up in a big way like ps3, they will continue to dominate .
FF15, Dragon Quest 11, RE7, and P5 are big releases for Japan.
SFV, Uc4, FF7:R for U.S and Europe
GT7, GTA6 evergreen titlte for ROTW
I mean then you have breakout potential for titles like Horizon, whatever ND does, Sony Bend, NMS etc...
I would say Sony's WWS and many big third party titles have been absent. Destiny 2 will likely be a bigger event than the first. The next Warchdogs should be big, Titan fall 2, Mass Effect, I think this gen is just getting started. Cross gen ports just stopped this year.
Thanks. So it's more about a YoY thing than anything else. Makes sense. The number didn't seem as bad to me after the relatively strong performance they had in Nov and Dec.
I wonder if X1 will outsell PS4 at any point going forward. If Halo 5 couldn't do it then it stands to reason that Gears 4 won't be enough either.
I agree, but I think Destiny 2 will actually be a better game. Despite the blunders, and bad rollout of updates, there's no denying Bungie has created a successful formula.
What I find crazy is the level of (dis)interest in the XB1 in February shown on Amazon.
For pretty much the entire month so far the GeoW XB1 bundle has been available at $299, with a special promo of a $30 Amazon gift card + FH2...And it's getting not just outsold by the COD $349 PS4 bundle (within the top 15 monthly so far), it's also down in the middle of page 2 for the month so far.
I wonder if Abdiel could possibly give us some insight about the month so far over at Best Buy, and if he sees the same level of (dis)interest?
Yes, but reading between the lines ... It almost didn't happen, given the obvious amount of bundle pre orders that were delayed into November I think... It was way too close for comfort for MS I imagine.
FF15, Dragon Quest 11, RE7, and P5 are big releases for Japan.
SFV, Uc4, FF7:R for U.S and Europe
GT7, GTA6 evergreen titlte for ROTW
I mean then you have breakout potential for titles like Horizon, whatever ND does, Sony Bend, NMS etc...
I would say Sony's WWS and many big third party titles have been absent. Destiny 2 will likely be a bigger event than the first. The next Warchdogs should be big, Titan fall 2, Mass Effect, I think this gen is just getting started. Cross gen ports just stopped this year.
Don't get me wrong, There are still big games coming out but many of the big games are out that's all I'm saying. Many of those games you mentioned are not bigger then the game already released aside from gta6 nothing is bigger then the games already released.
Don't get me wrong, There are still big games coming out but many of the big games are out that's all I'm saying. Many of those games you mentioned are not bigger then the game already released aside from gta6 nothing is nigger then the games already released.
Don't get me wrong, There are still big games coming out but many of the big games are out that's all I'm saying. Many of those games you mentioned are not bigger then the game already released aside from gta6 nothing is nigger then the games already released.
The biggest Sony IP released so far this generation was Killzone. Naughty Dog hasn't even released a new game, both of their last games went to sell 8M+ units.
The biggest Sony IP released so far this generation was Killzone. Naughty Dog hasn't even released a new game, both of their last games went to sell 8M+ units.
The biggest Sony IP released so far this generation was Killzone. Naughty Dog hasn't even released a new game, both of their last games went to sell 8M+ units.
Yea exlusives just don't sell consoles anymore like they used, they provide a small push bit nothing is pushing consoles like the big third-party franchises, just look at wiiu.
Oh a totally agree. In the long run, the APU really means little as the PS4 will still sell more software per publisher just by value of sheer volume.
That said, when we move into targetting a platform for upselling DLC and season passes the Xbox users have proven they still hold a significant value that cannot be ignored.
Its no different from Nintendo saying "look, we know the WiiU sold like shit, but our hardcore fanbase will keep us profit because they will buy every amiibo going".
It is console war bait, but the logic is still sound.
In actuailty Its nothing to be proud of (or be offended by, for that matter).
I don't think you are saying that Xbox users buy more DLC per software, but I have seen that assertion made using the maths done in that article. Which is also bogus. Let me show you:
Let's say that PS4 has sold 40 million and 8 million of those buy a particular video game at $60. 50% of those then buy $15 worth of DLC for that game. Therefore the total revenue made from selling both the game and DLC is $540 million.
Code:
8 * $60 = $480
4 * $15 = $60
$480 + $60 = $540
Now we divide it by the number of units sold ($540/40) and we get $13.5 made by the publisher per PS4.
Now let's say Xbox has sold 20 million and 5 million of those buy the same game at $60. Again 50% of those then buy DLC worth $15. Therefore the total revenue made from selling both is $337.5 million.
Now we divide it by the number of units sold ($337.5/20) and we get $16.88 made by the publisher per Xbox.
Now let's assume that 60% of the players on PS4 buy DLC. So that means 4.8 million bought the DLC on PS4 and not 4 million like before. The total revenue jumps to $552 million.
Code:
4.8 * $15 = $72
480 + $72 = $552
So like before, if we divide it by the number of units sold ($552/40) and we get $13.8 made by the publisher per PS4. Which is still less than Xbox's number at 50%.
See what I mean? Even though a higher percentage of players bought DLC on PS4 the bogus math doesn't shows that. As you can see that everything on PS4's side is diluted by twice as many PS4s sold.
If the claim is simply that Xbox is viable for Ubisoft then all of this is just redundant. You can just look at the break down of the software percentages and determine that Xbox ecosystem is the second largest for Ubisoft and at 27% more than viable.
To effectively gauge which player base actively buys more DLC (and/or season passes) comparatively, we would need someone in the know to give us the ratio of revenue made from DLC (and/or season passes) per revenue made from just video game sales for both Xbox and PS4.
The amount of PS4/PS3/Vita systems out there would probably mean PlayStation's MAU is much higher than Xbox's. Unless Microsoft is counting Windows 10.
MS do count Live activity on W10, but PSN MAU is still significantly higher. Live MAU hit 48M in December, but PSN MAU was already 65M last March. When Live was at 39M in September, they said they had "almost as many" users on Windows as they did on the consoles. So, ~19M from W10 at that point? It's not terribly clear how they're counting.
It's a good thing MS had all those exclusives last fall and managed to beat Sony in number of consoles sales, right? Exclusives don't drive hardware sales nearly as much as some of you still like to believe.
The whole point of generating more console sales is to sell more software. This deal allows MS to do just that.
Actually, the whole point of generating more console sales is to collect more licensing revenues, and this deal doesn't help MS do that. On the contrary, rather than more reason to buy a Bone, there's now less reason. That means still lower hardware sales, which means less licensing revenue for MS, and less interest from third parties.
1 billion hours is huge right ?
With about 20 millions One out there, that makes an average of 50 hours spent gaming for every console. I am not sure I play that much, and I consider myself a big gamer...
1 billion hours works out to about 1.3M Bone owners online at any given time. Of course, the highly localized appeal of the Bone means it's unlikely usage is actually distributed that evenly. Maybe there are 4M Bone owners in the US using it for gaming and TV from 1600 to 2200 local, and no other activity. The truth is obviously somewhere in between, but likely tending towards the latter.
Mmmmm, data <3 Any chance we can get something more specific on PS4? My guess for January would be about 13%, perhaps a shade higher? December would probably more like 15% or even 20%, given the existence of $300 stock.
I'm guessing that the actual ASPs are gonna be too much to ask for? One thing I've always been curious about is how promotions are handled. If a console is $50 off one week, is that reflected in the ASP? What if it instead includes a $50 gift card, or a game valued at $50? Did 80% of Bone or PS4 sales come on the back of a $50 discount somehow not shown in the 5%/15% ASP drop? Is the ASP as reported by NPD any different from how the platform holders would be booking it in their financials? In a nutshell, how much of these price drops and promotions are being hidden by the marketing budget? ASP doesn't get discussed much, but I don't know if that's because it's super secret, or I'm the only one that actually pays attention to it. lol
The problem with that statement is that it is taking console sales as a semi-fixated quantity that would go to one or another manufacturer depending of which one of them makes less mistakes, which is a ridiculous approach.
If the PS4 wasn't a compelling product by itself, it would not sell as good as it does. No matter what the XB1 was doing on the process. When nobody makes a product the market wants, the market simply buys less products.
The major factor of PS1 and PS2 success was Sony
The major factor of PS3 failures was obviously Sony
The major factor of current PS4 success is, indeed, Sony.
That works for the others in the same way.
That's not questionable imho, because the other way of thinking takes sales for granted.
In the US, if MS had not fucked up the XB1, the PS4 would not be the market leader. Starting January 2010, the 360 had consistently outsold the PS3 every month up until September 2013, and that was because the PS3 had the GTAV bundle (even then the difference was 37k). The 8th gen was Microsoft's to lose, and well, they did.
About current gen, if Microsoft had played their cards right Xbox One would be selling way more than PS4 in USA, this alone would have a significant impact in worldwide numbers, plus Xbox One likely would have more market share than it has today in the rest of the world.
Here's the thing guys; that's not what happened. Requiring you buy a Kinect so they could measure your response to television ads. Requiring that you submit that information daily to retain access to your games. The used games shenanigans. Gimping the console as gaming device purely for the purpose of expanding the Windows hegemony. Yes, these were all terrible decisions. But the real point here is that Microsoft made every single one of those terrible decisions, thinking that they were good decisions.
The fact is, MS really aren't that great at this whole console thing. Their biggest success to date was having the console which sold the slowest during the generation, resulting in it finishing in a tie for last place, despite competitive advantages such as parity clauses and exclusive access to the influential early adopter market for a year. Yes, their best-selling console tied for last place, because it got a head start (and they cheated). This generation, the seemed to have secured themselves a solid, if very distant, hold on second place. Of course, NX may launch very soon and outsell the Bone or even the PS4, but I'm not sure how you'd really count that anyway. /shrug
Someone argued that considering the fact that XBox started with nothing at all in a market filled with strong players, XB1 actually did quite well to have only been outsold 6:1 by PS2, but they seem to forget that just a generation prior, PS1 faced the same odds, and not only completely dominated the existing heavyweights, but went on to basically redefine the modern console industry.
Sorry, but no, I wouldn't consider party chat to be industry defining.
Sure, paywalls I'd grant. Parity clauses too, so kudos to MS for bringing us that stuff. Très innovante!
But hey, everybody makes mistakes, right? Sony fucked up big time last generation, didn't they? Well, looking at their fuckup, it seems their problem was primarily an issue of over-engineering. Like both of the previous PlayStations, the system they designed was indeed quite performant if a bit hard to grok but it was also godawful expensive, and as consumers, we almost literally only saw the half of that.
So when a console from one company carries a significant risk of being gimped as a gaming device because that happened to better suit the company's own agenda of eliminating all competition to its businesses, while a console from another company carries a significant risk of being way more powerful that maybe it needs to be, guess which company is more likely to get my money. That's why Sony dominate the console space while MS are quietly exiting it.
Actually, it's precisely the same. Not to take anything away from MJ, but you can't seriously argue that his numbers wouldn't have suffered if the guys playing against him had been making all the right moves rather than all the wrong moves as they actually did. All they had to do was block just one more shot, and he'd have scored two less points, right? So the primary reason Mike is in the hall of fame is because Larry Bird let him score so much.
Now, if you feel that's a ridiculous argument, because those guys were obviously trying their best, and it's Mike's unmatched talent that simply makes those other dudes look like chumps by comparison, then again, it's precisely the same; it is Sony's dominance over even strong competitors like Nintendo which has earned Sony their rightful place in the console hall of fame, and MS are the star quarterback who won nationals but even with the backing of a strong team, could barely make the playoffs in the pros, so now they're going back to Daddy's business of selling cars, hoping to parlay their 15 minutes of fame in to a few extra applications of undercoating.
So yeah, pretty decent sports metaphor, actually. So Monday-morning CEOing is generally considered just as silly and pointless as Monday-morning quarterbacking, and for precisely the same reasons, because in fact, it's effectively the same activity. It might make someone feel smart to come along the following morning and say, "After careful consideration, I would've taken the risk, or played it safe, or otherwise addressed whatever it is I've identified as the root cause of the failure," but it really doesn't require that much talent, or provide that much utility. It might have utility if you were personally involved in planning the next battle, but even if you were, simply knowing where you fucked up last time will only get you so far.
None of these companies are particularly special. They're all doing the same thing in terms of fighting in the market. Some win, some lose. Who's going to win next gen? What does next gen even look like? Who's even competing? Get a dartboad out, put company logos on it, throw a dart at it, and whatever picture that dart hits is just as likely to be the market leader next gen as any other on the board.
Now, this is a sports analogy I can't agree with at all, for the reasons I described above. While we may be somewhat limited in our ability to make accurate predictions, this stuff certainly isn't random, nor is it predominantly luck-based. Nobody needs to "get lucky" here; everyone knows who's participating and what they offer. whatsanxbox.gif Apart from anti-competitive factors such as parity clauses, this stuff is largely decided on merit. Consequently, the most meritorious competitors will tend to prevail. Competition breeds Winners, but it generally breeds a far greater number of Losers in the process, eventually out of the former Winners. Nintendo were top dogs until Sony showed up and took the belt. After two generations of failing to successfully compete against Sony, they went a different route, attracting new types of gamers with new types of games built around a new type of UI. They had a lot of success with that strategy, but it seems they've since lost those users to the now-ubiquitous smartphone, sporting its own, ultra-accessible UI, while further alienating "core" console gamers in the process. Having seen how easily Sony snatched the belt from Nintendo, Microsoft decided to take it for themselves, but after 15 years of not coming anywhere close to displaying the type of dominance we've seen from truly worthy competitors like Sony, Nintendo, and Atari, they've decided to retreat back to doing what they are good at; leveraging the Windows monopoly. Think of it like Jordan's brief foray in to baseball, if that helps.
On the other hand, if your point was that much like a game of darts, the console business is a competition wherein the outcome is determined almost entirely by the skill of the participants, which allows us to eventually identify the true Champions of the Game, but who's specific outcomes are governed by factors that can be difficult or even impossible to predetermine, meaning that our predictions can never be truly certain, then I wholeheartedly agree.
Actually, I would argue that claiming RROD shouldn't/can't be discussed without being able to precisely measure its effects is the "fanboy gibberish." Obviously, it was a factor in a lot of things, and you can argue about how big of a factor it was, or you could not, but I see no need to attempt to squelch the discussion entirely.
The fact of the matter is the Xbox brand and the Playstation brand in the US share a nearly 1:1 demo in terms of purchasing habits and buying power and the loss of sale to one far more often than not leads to a purchase of the other.
To be fair, that's largely because Microsoft's strategy for XBox hasn't been much more sophisticated than simply stealing users from PlayStationWiiNetflixPlayStation Steam. Typically, various offerings in the marketplace would be more dissimilar. See above regarding Nintendo, for example. By targeting users so specifically, MS don't offer something new so much as merely a distraction from the established leader. "PlayStation, by Microsoft" isn't really as innovative and useful as it might initially sound. Hence, their participation in the marketplace has really been more divisive or subtractive than additive. "PlayStation games" must now also support XBox, because some of those users specifically have been lured away. Believe me, EA, Ubi, and the rest would be much happier if that specific demographic were all on the same platform, even if that drove ARPU down even more. It'd be much easier on retail as well.
That seems a bit myopic, especially given the fact that XBox's performance in English-speaking markets is hardly typical of its overall performance. If you only looked at the US, you'd get the impression that XBox went from completely dominating PlayStation to being slightly outsold by PlayStation, but what actually happened is it went from being slightly outsold by PlayStation to being completely dominated by PlayStation.
Anyway, I'm mainly gauging it from the fact that TLG did get a lot of interest this E3, looking solely at YT views of 4 million. That's not a small amount, and while view counts are only one small metric is a sea of influencing factors, at least we know there's interest and awareness of TLG in the larger gaming audience.
Unlike say, random JRPGs that only get 50-100k views on YT. ;_;
I was thinking TLG might perform similarly to Bloodborne, and the latter's reveal sits at 2.8M, so actually TLG has drawn a bit more interest. Install base will be much larger for TLG launch too, but I'm not sure how much install base even really factors in to a game like this. /shrug
Ubisoft did not say anything about it. It was Venturebeat's desperate attempt at positive Xbox spin. They took numbers from Sony's announcement, EA's estimates, Ubisoft's financial report, threw them into a blender, and got 1.25.
Ahhh, okay. Thanks, I was reading the WinBeta article, wondering where that quote came from and who would actually say something like that, because no, it's not very good analysis IMO.
Poor people buy PS4 because they can only afford one console, so obviously you go PS4 because it's the best; everyone has one.
Check. Only rich people will buy a Bone, because it's only useful as a second console for exclusives; obviously not your go-to device.
Check. Rich people buy more games than poor people.
Check. When buying multi-platform games, rich people will buy them for their exclusives console rather than their go-to console, and maybe also buy a second copy for their exclusives box, because reasons.
Wut?
The funniest part is that any of the above being true says very little. All it says is that things are normal in that tie ratios fall as installed base increases. It says nothing about the people buying those consoles, or anything really.
"Seeing a jump to $1.25 from the year-to-date average of $1.18 especially on third-party games is a flashing sign to all publishers that Xbox One is a place to make money."
Yeah, I'd call that both shit analysis and spin, to be honest. In calendar 2015, 59% of Ubi's Gen8 revenue came from PS4. Seems that would be the neon sign, flashing, "Money to be had here."
The premise of the entire article seemed to be that ARPU was the most important and telling piece of data, directly telling publishers where their primary focus should be.
Okay, so what? What is it about the article that you find offputting? The data itself, or the assumed intent of the article? Those are two different things. I'm addressing one of those two things, I don't care about the other.
You said ARPU was higher on Bone, and someone else claimed Ubi said the same. Then Eerik pointed out that it wasn't Ubi who said so, but rather VentureBeat who said so, seeking positive spin for the Bone. You argued that isn't not spin if the math checks out, but nobody claimed that the math didn't check out, but rather that presenting a statistic which is largely meaningless as particularly meaningful is what constitutes spin.
So, yeah, nobody was really attacking you, or claims of higher ARPU on the Bone. Just that the higher ARPU isn't particularly meaningful or even unexpected in and of itself, as you seem to agree.
"Third" is always in relation to the superlative; the "biggest," in this case. Your use of the comparative case when comparing February directly to November and December was correct, however. Each of the latter months is bigger than February. <3
Also, you really don't need to capitalize so many words; we haven't really done that since the times of the Declaration of Independence.
And the position of the biggest used games retailer basically was "give us free codes for our customers or we're not buying your products." So then what can you do? If you give the biggest retailer free activation codes for your used products or they don't carry your product then you have to give free activation codes to all used retailers. Problem is, someone had to pay for the codes, which were going to basically cost a reduced royalty fee. Who was going to do that? Were publishers now going to pay $5 to MS every time a customer bought a used game at the world's biggest retailer of used games product? How would those codes be tracked? Would each game now need a SKU specifically for used game activation codes?
Regarding retail, I'm sure that prior to the reveal, their relationship with MS had been quite cordial, especially in the US, so there was no reason for them to assume retail wouldn't do as they were told, so there was no reason to risk having their brilliant plan fall in to Sony's hands by running it past their friends in retail.
Regarding consumers, they did the research, and it told them that while folks like us here at GAF would be livid, that wouldn't matter in the long run, because the unwashed masses were too uninformed to even realize what MS were trying to pull. If it seemed like someone was getting suspicious, they could be easily distracted with a shiny bauble like Titanfall and Halo, or silenced with a combination ad hominem/appeal to authority like, "Excuse me, but are you on the development team?"
I cannot begin to tell you how little mindshare with the development community Sony had leading into the announcement of the next gen consoles. Every significant third party partner had been consulted, but the bulk of interest in where the industry was about to go to revolved around Microsoft's launch. That they didn't read the market, or communicate the benefits of their vision adequately enough, meant that mindshare began to trickle back. After Sony nailed their launch that trickle became a torrent and then a flood.
What would have happened had Microsoft been a little more conservative? Hard to say, but there is no doubt that swing would not have been that severe.
There is so much to write on that period. One day it'll get done.
That's strange because PS3 sold virtually the same of 360, Playstation is a big brand, so I wonder why the industry was leaning so much to Microsoft side.
Sure the successor of Xbox 360 was positioned to sell big, but I would not rule Sony out in any moment.
Remember that at this point, developers still weren't sure if Humble Sony had fully reclaimed the throne from Arrogant Sony, the Usurper. Meanwhile, pre-Bone, MS will still firmly in the Embrace and Extend phase of their entry in to the console space, so goodwill for MS was quite high indeed. Everybody always forgets about Step 3 though, because while there are a few people who really pay attention and care deeply about this stuff, in the broader market, people don't really pay attention to the details. We've seen it in the research. We've seen it in a lot of the data points.
The sales went down while being $299 at some major retailers when the January sales have already been low. a few months after releasing Halo 5 , Forza 6 ,Rise of the Tomb Raider & Gears of War:UE "Greatest Games Line-Up in Xbox History" that's not good when your competition almost outsell you 2:1 at a higher price & you're already $150 - $200 below your launch price & you don't have much room for a price drop unless you release a slim model.
8GB of flash , 8GB of DDR3 , 32MB eSRAM, Standard 500GB harddrive , Blu-ray drive & they are already around the same price as the Wii U which is already stuck around that price range with lesser tech inside of it's console.
Xbox 360 with 500GB hdd is $199 & Xbox One with 500GB hdd is $299 (at some retailers ) the sales went down YoY at this price for the month & the rest of the year up until the holidays don't look like it's going to go up YoY. it's gonna have to go down to $249 this holiday season or something.
I went back and updated all those posts I made comparing weekly averages and all that. Again, in the grand scheme of things, nothing's changed. Just slightly less doom.
Oh, hey, I was gonna mention that if Gen 8 was in fact perfectly flat unit-wise, that'd give 230k, 132k, and 40k. So do those values sound agreeable to those who are charting?
Oh, hey, I was gonna mention that if Gen 8 was in fact perfectly flat unit-wise, that'd give 230k, 132k, and 40k. So do those values sound agreeable to those who are charting?
The one thing I'm going to miss about George (not trying to bring that up again) was that he gave us the numbers from the year before! That would help so much.
I was saying that earlier when the 20% increase in PS4 sales YOY for January was rumored. I would have never expected for either console to win by nearly 100k in the Month of January when the sales are so low in the first place.
January is normally very tight. The rest of this year is going to be very interesting.
It just shows what happens when the PS4 has price parity or undercuts. The X1 has to be cheaper or the gap will be larger compared to the gaps last year. Never mind the games coming this year.
On the subject of Ubi's results, I was planning to bump that thread at some point, but in short, while I was initially surprised at the comparatively strong showing for the Bone, looking more closely at the numbers, it seems that Ubi's sales were actually down overall, but more severely for PS4 than for Bone. More severely for PS4 than for any of the "current" platforms, including PC, as a matter of fact. It's still easily their single largest earner, but it seems Ubi's calendar 2014->2015 drop was fueled primarily by a drop in PS4 sales. And these are all absolute revenue drops; ARPU dropped even more severely, given the increased installed bases. Loss of Gen7 sales hit them pretty hard as well though.
The one thing I'm going to miss about George (not trying to bring that up again) was that he gave us the numbers from the year before! That would help so much.
So, what will sales thread turn into when Xbox and windows store join force?
Console sales doesn't matter anymore? Xbox install base turn into over 200m if we count all windows 10 device? 90% digital sale?
