There’s nothing normal about interviewing Xbox chief Phil Spencer these days.
kotaku.com
Phil Spencer was convinced that core gamers would initially go for the XSX but that given time, the XSS would be the driver of sales. What he misunderstood is that gamers largely want the best experience possible and that 400-500 dollars is really already pretty entry-level.
They must have done surveying to see what one of the major concerns with the XSS was and the response must have been at least somewhat directed towards storage, hence the release of the Carbon Black, but I bet anything the limited hardware was a bigger concern, but there's nothing you can do about that. Releasing the Carbon Black actually muddies the waters since it is SO close to the PS5 DE in price.
The creation of the XSS was a boneheaded decision, but you can look across the design of the X Series and you can see the boneheaded design language all over the place. Split memory, proprietary disk drive... These are the things that on their edges make competition really difficult.
Sony on the otherhand looked to decrease bottlenecks, had a standard NVME solution, and focused on ways to differentiate themselves in a positive light: 3D audio, haptic controls, VR, digital edition PS5.
$ for $ Sony is making significantly better purchases.
They bought Insomniac for 229 million, and Microsoft bought Bethesda for 7.5 billion, which is going to have the better-selling game this year? Who has generated more revenue since their purchases?
Sony doesn't have the money that Microsoft has, but because they don't have the money, they know they have to make better moves and smarter moves. They already made a huge mistake with the PS3 that has done irreparable harm to the playstation brand, but you look at their management and philosophy and they're just in a completely different mindset from Microsoft. Ultimately, it comes down to upper management and Phil Spencer doesn't know what he is doing.