-
Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.
Will this be the defining holiday season for Xbox One?
- Thread starter The Sarcastic Dude
- Start date
BeforeU
Oft hope is born when all is forlorn.
Forza 5 is the best sim racing right now. Not sure what you talking about.
It has less content but its one of those games where you can say quality > quantity. All cars and tracks are given a premium feel.
Forza 6 with day/night weather effect is gonna be so good.
With gran turismo its always about quantity. Now that doesnt mean it has not quality. But I have spend good chunk of time with both GT5 and GT6. You have like thousands of car, 80% with no to shit interior and most of the cars you dont even care about, load times are painful, online isnt as robust as Forza. I am just nitpicking but you get the point. Gran Turismo need a change, and now deliver on 60fps better online and better car interiors and sound.
Yes. And yes we have a strong indication for sales minimum.
GT6 likely sold >2.5 million units. (probably a bit more because not everyone downloads the GT Vision cars. And not every player who bought a copy is still active and downloads new cars/updates etc. But there's also 2nd hand copies of course)
https://www.gtplanet.net/2-5-millio...ston-martins-vision-gt-car-in-gran-turismo-6/
Forza Motorsport 5 sold >1.3 million units.
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2014-02-18-ms-forza-5-fastest-selling-racing-game-in-xbox-history
Forza Motorsport 5 only sold ~1.25 million units as of February 2014.
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2014-02-18-ms-forza-5-fastest-selling-racing-game-in-xbox-history
Forza Horizon 1 & 2 weren't big sellers either.
Ratchet & Clank mainline games sell like 3-4 million.
Steverulez
Member
Wasn't that during the PS2 era? I think the first R&C on PS3 did over a million (how far I don't know) but I dont think they sold 3-4 million each
Natureboy99
Banned
E3 will give a lot of answers. I think Holiday 2014 was the most defining though. They did everything they could to get people to buy a XB1.
The Ratchet & Clank franchise as a whole sold 27 million units as of September 2014.
So, no definitely not only the PS2 games, otherwise the sales for the whole series would be significantly lower.
I really don't see MS announcing a slim Xbox One this year.
BRocknRolla
Member
That sounds like an incredible leap to get to a slim model and $299. Is there anything to even back up the notion of a slim model beyond wishful thinking?
RaGNaRoK 2k5
Banned
WiiU Zelda wouldn't have any impact. Halo 5 is the exclusive to beat this holiday season. <3
Rumours been around for a while, and my guess is: the time is right.
I am still trying to find it, but I'm pretty certain I read that ACIT didn't crack 2 million. That's still very strong for such a long-running series, but I think games in the franchise sold better in its earlier days, which may explain why they're reimagining it now.
Ultimately, any game that manages to sell multiple millions of copies is a strong game. Forza and Ratchet both accomplish that.
BRocknRolla
Member
Source?
This would be great; I don't disagree there, but I just don't know that there's any real smoke, much less fire, on this rumor.
Banjo-Kazooie
Member
Totally agree with you. Many GAFers concentrate too much on raw numbers, that don't tell you ish without putting them in a context.
I looked up the numbers for you (old but that is irrelevant) S-Klasse vs. 7er vs. A8:
No smart investor would ever base an investment decision on these numbers and buy Mercedes stock because they "move more units". He would ask "how much are they making per car" too. Soooo this holiday season won't define anything.
Logic of many here: BWM and Audi should get out of the luxury car business. Mercedes is outselling them.
This is my biggest gripe with NPD threads and weekly sale charts... "The Order sold 50K this week, that's really good!!", basically just comparing it to what other games sell or if the number sounds like it's high. Okay, so what, let's say The Order sold 1 million units in its first month...okay sweet, but the game was in development for upwards of 4-5 years...so how PROFITABLE was it? Who cares if it outsold whatever game it was against, that is completely irrelevant to the game doing well. (Not trying to single out The Order, just an example)
And the thing is, none of us know how much these games cost to make, let alone market, depreciate, ect, unless we are told, which rarely ever happens until years after the fact.
Dragonborn
Member
We don't have that info readily available so we talk about the info that we do get. What's so hard to understand about that?
What do you expect pepole to do, just not tall about anything?
Obviously the numbers aren't the end all be all, but hey. They offer some indication of how well a product is doing.
And we're talking about profit margins, I'd imagine Sony is making more too. As I recall, the X1, even by itself, cost more to make and it's being sold for less along with free games.
Heck, during the last holiday period MS sold what, 400-500k more X1s (NA only) than Sony did PS4 but they had to do so via dropping the price significantly, offering the console for almost $100 less along with gift cards and multiple free games. Now I may be wrong here, but I'd say that even though they sold more units, they ended up making less. Meanwhile Sony sat back, did next to nothing, and still sold a crap load of PS4s.
Someone else mentioned that they didn't think MS would be able to achieve the same success they did last time and I kind of agree. Sony did nothing last Holidays. They got the GTA bundle out but that was about it, they pretty much just let the console sell itself and kept in stock.
This time around, I don't see them doing that. If Sony actually gets serious, they've got the Holidays in the bag, Halo 5 or not. For example, the X1 was already $329 last time during BF (and even when it wasn't) and you could find it for as low as $299. So really, would doing $299 this holiday season be enough? Probably not, especially if Sony has a lower price point. Which, if they do, then is MS willing to hit $249 this early (or maybe 279) With free games.
I've said it before, and I still stand by this, price isn't MS' biggest issue and throwing money won't make the problems go away. The big albatross (other than the now removed Kinect) dragging the X1 down is its image problem.
Last Gen MS did a brilliant job of making the 360 the go-to console, the one the cool people bought and played on. Their marketing was spot on. Yet this Gen it's almost like they've never marketed a console before. In fact, I'd argue that part of Sony's success was looking at what MS did with the 360 and emulating some of it. Stuff like the parity clause make their image worse. They need to fix all of that if they want to stay in the game.
In my opinion, E3 is the perfect time. Re-introduce the console. Lower price point, Halo 5 bundle, and most importantly change the way they approach selling the thing. Get some new, competent marketing, be more transparent and open about policies, show that there's some more change going on beyond Phil "the games" Spencer just tweeting what people want to hear.
Steverulez
Member
I think they will rebrand the Xbox One, but they just dropped the price and MS aren't going to do it again at E3 if for no other reason than no-one does it E3.
They'll announce their special edition consoles and other bundles at Gamescom like they did last year (with the exception of the Halo 5 console which may get announced earlier because Halo).
Lol, "Phil the games Spencer" is almost as good as your tired bit about demographics. Last I checked, he responds to fans and has no issues about telling it straight when something isn't happening (Conker most recently) but he's also not going to just announce their big plans on twitter.
You don't seem like much of an Xbox fan, at all so if you're not interested in what he says on twitter then fair enough but I like his responses and that he does it, I also know plenty of other people that like it too.
His record for what he says and things actually happening is pretty good (see Phantom Dust, despite the unplanned dev changes, he gave hope and they announced it, he has also responded to a few tweets about it since, too)
Given today is his 1 year anniversary in the job, I think he's done well so far but the next year will be a lot more telling about his plans and how he does things, possibly even a little more beyond that.
On topic, part of the problem imo is M.S. making the X1 a holiday system and the other 10 months don't really count. This premise is even assumed in the OP, I don't believe focusing on just November and December is a viable strategy for building momentum and one's user base. Sony's strategy of releasing games All year is the better Strategy imo. By just focusing on the holidays I'd argue M.S. is giving the public no reason to purchase the console until the holidays when exclusive games are release for it and ludicrous deals are going to be made for it. So until November why purchase an X1? Last year they had nothing but Titanfall till the holidays, this year they have nothing of real interest till Q4 of this year when you know deals and bundles are also coming. There is just no reason to buy an X1 in March or May, June etc...
Disclaimer: I'm not saying someone should not buy an X1, if you like it's library go for it, I'm just saying that by just focusing on November and December and that's pretty much it. It gives consumers less incentive to purchase the X1 outside the holiday months, Heck it trains consumers to "wait"
Disclaimer: I'm not saying someone should not buy an X1, if you like it's library go for it, I'm just saying that by just focusing on November and December and that's pretty much it. It gives consumers less incentive to purchase the X1 outside the holiday months, Heck it trains consumers to "wait"
How will they rebrand the XBO? Just call it the Win10 Box?
Dragonborn
Member
Rebrand in a similar way to what Sony did via the PS3 slim last Gen.
Steverulez
Member
They did it with the 360, the new colour scheme/boxart and styles etc. New slogan or something, perhaps they will pack something else in to the box, if the rumours of the new controller are true they might bundle that in. Perhaps the MCC bundle was part of a stock clearing process.
Hmm yeah I don't know. A shame if it sold less than 2 million though. That would probably make Ratchet & Clank: A Crack in Time one of the worst selling Ratchet games in the mainline, despite being the best Ratchet & Clank game.
Terrible name.
Cthulhu_Steev
Member
Imagine if they dealt the knockout blow to Sony with that name, it would be PR for the ages.
Hans.Gruber
Banned
Exactly, many people in this thread boil down "defining" for MS to "will they sell more consoles" than Sony this Holiday because of exclusives. But it's also very important that MS keeps the X1 users they have, and gets them to spend money. Also W10 streaming will makes X1 users not likely to switch to OSX or Linux.
This holiday line up defines X1 as a console that is getting solid first party support.
Along with stable online infrastructure and regular updates to the OS this will have an effect on people contemplating getting a WindowsPhone or a surface.
I don't either but man... this year would be the perfect time to do so. Very solid gaming lineup + Uncharted 4 delay + possible price drop all on top of a smaller/nicer model? It would get a lot of buzz.
But yeah, I'm not expecting it this soon. Maybe in another year or two.
The thing that I don't get about this is why it's being called a strategy this early in the gen. The console isn't two years old yet. For all we may know, the development time of early gen games in the Xbox One's lineup could simply fit having the majority of that content release during the Holiday season.
More games get released the older a gen gets so I'm positive that this won't be a trend. MS will definitely save their biggest exclusives of the year for the Holiday season but I don't think they will save ALL of them for that time of the year from here on out. On top of this, most consumers wait until the Holiday season to buy consoles anyway.
M.S. have been treating the Xbox brand as a holiday console for years now or at least more so when compared to Sony. They don't have any of the advantages they used to back in the 360 days.
Who cares about 900p on cut scenes? I barely noticed a difference between the jumps and TR still looks and plays great at 1080/30.
If you know it'll look a little better on PS4 and are set on buying it for that system then cool but your concerns about it's "graphical potential being diminished" are a little silly, this is much ado about nothing.
TharpDaddy
Member
If I enjoy a game I enjoy a game, a small boost in graphics won't increase my enjoyment. If it did I'd just wait for a PC release for most games rather than playing it on XBO or PS4. I might be a minority in that though. I was all but indifferent to the graphical changes when I moved from playing Warframe on PS4 to PC, it doesn't add that much to have it be a little nicer looking.
Birgitte2004
Member
One holiday season can't do that for anybody who has paid attention to the Xbox and 360. Eventually Microsoft just dropped support for them off a cliff for some reason.
DOWN
Banned
Because the customers dropped support for the sales. Game sales are front loaded, and the people who support that also support the new generation pretty quick. That's why PS3/360 games sell a fraction of current gen versions, despite there being dozens of millions more of those old systems on the market still.
You just acknowledged it is technologically inferior and then asked if I really would rather have the better version. Obviously, I would rather have the better version.
Birgitte2004
Member
Either you misread what I said or you posted nonsense. The PS3's lineup was fine all the way up to the PS4 release. Microsoft's lineup for the 360 was pathetic for the last 3 years or so prior to the Xbox One launch, like they stopped trying.
Probably not, but with Nintendo and Sony's holiday lineups looking quite barren with all the delays, this could be their best shot.
Not gonna happen if all they've got is Halo though. Scalebound would be huge because it covers a completely different market than their usual crap (yea MS first party is crap) since I know Phantom Dust has no chance at coming out this year.
Not gonna happen if all they've got is Halo though. Scalebound would be huge because it covers a completely different market than their usual crap (yea MS first party is crap) since I know Phantom Dust has no chance at coming out this year.
thelastcrusader
Banned
Don't get the joke?Feels like it's Xbox One's holiday to lose:
Mr Reasonable
Completely Unreasonable
What are you talking about? The 360 is still getting Microsoft studios releases. Remember Forza / Furious from about a week ago? Looking forward to Tomb Raider at the end of the year? What about Ori and the Blind Forest? Remember a few days ago when they announced 4 free games this month? Titanfall, Forza Horizon 2?
What isn't getting released on 360 that should be in your opinion? Halo5? You've got to let some things go over to next gen or you'll never get the benefit of the new system. As for third parties, surely that's up to them? I'm surprised that Microsoft are still supporting 360 as well as they have done this past 18 months.
Feels like it's Xbox One's holiday to lose:
Uh... How is FFXV, KH3, or the Division at all influenced by Sony... And Kevin Butler reference? Salting a wound for no reason? Lol. Odd. Not really funny, either.
Hans.Gruber
Banned
2012 was allright. 2013 was bad for 360, but X1 came out so its just business related. You can still get FH2, TF and Tomb Raider on 360. You call that dropped support? 360 was a 8 year old machine in 2013 that sold for really cheap of course support will be worse than X1. And OG Xbox got canned early, so Bad example.
let me refresh your memory
“History has shown us that the first company to reach 10 million in console sales wins the generation battle. We are uniquely positioned to set a new benchmark for the industry.”
http://news.microsoft.com/2008/05/14/xbox-360-first-gaming-system-to-reach-10-million-in-u-s-console-sales-this-generation/
So how does that explain Sony's comeback at the tail end of last generation? Anything can happen really. For all we know Nintendo may come out with a new system that stomps everything else like the Wii did haha
Despite the PS3's comeback towards the end of the last generation, the 360 was cemented as the go-to console which defined the generation up until the very end. The PS3 had become a "second console" for many, me included. I got one for cheap when TLOU came out whereas I spent most of the generation playing and spending my money on 360. Now the roles are reversed and I don't see that changing ever. Just like the PS3, the Xbox One is doomed to play catch-up up for its whole life span. No short spike in sales during holidays in NA will change that.
Hydrargyrus
Member
Because PS3 sold more WW since it was released. The "comeback" only means that it sold even more during the last years because the pricedrop, the games, policy change, PS+...
It was behind since the beginning because it was released one year (or more) later
This gen is far from this scenario
I don't think anybody doubts that Xbox One will lag behind, but Sony's example of their top class 1st party support, price point surely argue against it. There is still a long time in each platforms life cycle I'm positive we'll get some surprising changes in sales (especially Nintendo). But eh, that's just me always an optimist for everyone
Similar threads
- Poll
- Poll