Is the Xbox one going to die a slow and painful death

[Shoggoth2588]

I can see the XBone bouncing back if games like Quantum Break, Sunset Overdrive and Halo 5 are absolutely, groundbreaking. If anything I would have thought dropping the Kinect would have made the XBone more appealing. I don't think the Wii U will be going anywhere for a long while because of how strong Nintendo is financially. Microsoft is kind of different...it seems like there have been articles saying how the XBone isn't going anywhere but some insiders want MS to axe the gaming division. I don't see the Xbone dying slowly or painfully but it's not going to have a lot to brag about with this console generation.

 

[SeventhSigil]

Will it die? No, I would be seriously surprised if it did; to their credit Microsoft has done a great deal to reduce the barriers of entry and improve the appeal of their console. Granted, much of this involved fixing problems that they themselves created, which brings to mind those words of warning Jim Sterling made about gamer gratitude, but nonetheless, there are far less reasons for a gamer to outright avoid the Xbox One then there were six months ago. All it will come down to now, in terms of drawing in new customers, is presenting reasons for people to want the console, I.e. new games.

They even have a fair chance of regaining market parity in the United States, which isn't really saying much considering everyone, myself included, probably expected them to have the market lead in the United States before they shot themselves in the foot last E3. Catching up to the PS4 in their home territory will simply be a final acknowledgment that they haven't completely screwed the goose, but I'm less certain that they will enjoy the same wide LEAD in the U.S. that the 360 did. Far more likely, the US will be a much closer race this time around.

In most of Europe and Asia, with the Xbox One releasing over a year later in countries that were already more heavily aligned with Sony... Yeah, I wouldn't hold my breath.

The UK was, I believe, an Xbox stronghold last generation, and so I'm quite curious as to how extensively these last six months have changed that. If Sony has a similar lead there, Microsoft might be able to regain its dominant position with the new pricing models. But I don't really know much about the mindset and predilections over there to say for certain.

Japan is an interesting case, because although obviously the odds of the Xbox One proving successful there are extremely, extremely small, it should also be noted that the PS4 is having some trouble over there as well. This is probably a bit of a boon for Microsoft, because if Sony was replicating its prior success in Japan, the global sales gap would be even larger. And there's nothing to say that Sony won't eventually release a Japanese title of that recaptures the market, so that's essentially a timebomb that could go off at any moment.

China is a complete wildcard that really deserves it's own thread, because the sheer number of factors, some of which supports the idea of both consoles succeeding, some of which supports only one console succeeding, some of which supports both consoles failing horribly, means that really anything could happen. The inevitable censorship of games and titles alone could be a massive detriment to the success of the consoles against their pirated competition, but on the other hand, even capturing a fraction of the population of that country could be huge, turning a respectable profit even if it 9/10 of the gaming market there is pirating and only one 10th is actually buying from the official vendor. I'm quite looking forward to the product launches from both companies, should be an interesting show.


Tl:dr Xbox one will probably recapture the US, and has a chance of recapturing the UK, but the rest of the territories, and the overall global market, will likely lean in the favor of the PlayStation 4. Although the Xbox one will not fail because of their many, many errors, those errors have cost from some of the marketshare they built up during the 360 generation, both current and future.

 

[Something Amyss]

Yeah, they are behind, but so what? They still have respectable figures.

After backtracking. After backtracking heavily, in fact. The numbers being reported with pre-orders were something like 10 to one in Sony's favour. If people didn't care, that wouldn't matter. And the numbers wouldn't have leveled off once they backtracked.

The point of this thread is deduce whether or not they will die and that's just not going to happen.

Yes, but your argument was because people don't care, which is like saying gravity is real because invisible lobsters are pulling you to the ground. You showed your math, and that's what I was referring to. The thrust of your argument for why Microsoft isn't fucked is that people simply don't care. That's simply not true.

The Xbox and Gamecube were both completely dwarfed by the sales of the Playstation2, but you Nintendo or the xbox division of Microsoft hasn't died a 'slow and painful death' yet, so I can't see it happening now.

You missed a few words, but I think I catch your drift. No, they haven't died yet. Nintendo may end up dying a slow and painful death, though. With the exception of the Wii, their consoles have seen fewer and fewer units each gen. Investors have been dissatisfied thus far, and Nintendo has failed to get with the times.

Especially when Gold subscriptions ranking in millions of dollars a month for the company.

See, here's the thing, though. Microsoft still fails to pull in big, profitable returns, even with the Gold service being what it is. All things considered, this combined with their primary bent being software makes it easiest for them to leave the market and abandon their hardware. With Sony, the PS4 is about the only thing making a profit. With Nintendo, they're primarily a gaming business. Gaming and licensing is pretty much all they've got.

Besides, your argument relies on the notion that because they didn't go out of business, it wasn't an issue. For Microsoft, it was. If Halo hadn't been such a success, it might have been a different ballgame.


Also, many of those subscribers do you think will hang around when Microsoft inevitably cancels support for the 360? They're not even close to having numbers to rival the 360 install base, and it's coming like winter.

I'd disagree with your notion of people caring about the DRM and whatnot, but there's no way we can know what everyone was thinking; I'd wager that the reason Microsoft is behind is simply because of price, not anything else. $100 is a big deal for people; price is the number one concern for the vast majority of consumers.

As I note above, pre-orders were markedly different after the Xbone did a OneEighty. Since the price stayed the same and only the policy changed, I think we can factor in a significant chunk of people whose purchases were not impacted by price.

I imagine that some of the sales do factor down to the price difference, and I imagine some people will come to the Xbone when the Kinectless model comes out. I also imagine some of that has to do with the Kinect itself, something that was in the news as creepy NSA spyware shit.

In the end, though, I doubt MS is going to make up this loss simply by ditching Kinect. It's got weaker specs and will have lower-res versions of games, and even at the same price I doubt people are going to suddenly flock back. That's kind of a problem. Being third in a three-party race is a bad place to be. Watching sales differences increase over time isn't helping, and dissatisfied investors definitely isn't helping.

But again, my point wasn't to say that Xbone will die a slow, painful death. My point was to say people do care. If you're basing the success or failure of the console on whether or not people care, you're starting from a faulty premise.

 

[faefrost]

The XBone will do fine. It will not be the top console or dominate this generation. But it will do more than well enough. This Generation will be closer to the old Sega Genesis vs Nintendo days than any more modern cycles of console domination. What will finally kill it off will be virtualization and console agnostic streaming. The PS4 will be the stronger console this generation but the XBox will probably not be much more than 25-30% off from it. More than enough to be a solid success. It will not fall into a WiiU type death spiral.

And note I am not an XBox fanboy. I have been a Sony gamer since the PS1 days. I have never owned a MS console (or a Nintendo console for that matter. But every Nintendo Handheld.) But I have lived through enough generations of consoles to recognize a good launch and a console with staying power from a bad one. While XBone isn't top of the charts it has launched solidly enough to score one in the overall win column. The fact that it has near identical architecture with its closest competitor, and porting between them is reasonably painless compared to previous generations insures absolute third party support and a steady stream of multiplatform titles above and beyond any exclusives. Jettisoning the Kinnect cleared the biggest anchor around its neck and brought it down into a tolerable if not strictly speaking competitive price range.

 

[Evonisia]

Well Microsoft has been second twice now. The PS2 and Wii were much better sellers (even if the latter was just for one or two games) than the Xbox and Xbox 360 respectively.

Actually they were third last gen behing the Wii and PS3.
But the Xbox did manage second place - edging out the Gamecube in the 6th gen.

Well being in second place throughout the generation only to get toppled at the end would really place it as the solid second place holder. The PS3 didn't outsell the 360 until May 2013, like less than half a year before the Eight Generation.

 

[Eclectic Dreck]

Right now I'd say that no, it isn't even close to doomed. The case is relatively simple:

Thus far, several million new consoles have been shipped and sold to consumers. While the PS4 has an enviable lead of several million units in the US, you have to bear in mind that there were tens of millions of consoles sold. Thus far only a fraction of households have upgraded to a new console and thus there is a huge portion of a potential market to capture on either side.

If you then turn your eye towards the two devices on offer you'll start to notice that they more or less represent the same exact thing. Neither has any library of significance - with only a tiny handful of exclusives. The PS4 has a slight edge in online services but when Microsoft goes forward with opening media services to silver members that edge disappears entirely. Both devices are similarly powerful and indeed the only notable hardware variable is in memory speed which is such a nebulous advantage that it quite literally won't make a difference for a very long time. The differences in performance between the two has less to do with the hardware than the philosophy of use. The Xbox One is aiming at trying to do many things at once and focuses on being able to rapidly switch between tasks where the PS4 focuses on doing single things at once. That and having to dedicate processing power to the Kinect are almost certainly what accounts for the difference and thus being a problem of software rather than hardware is something that can be corrected down the line. What you ultimately have is a pair of systems that are broadly similar or at least have the potential for symmetry at all levels of performance and function. That begs a simple question: why has the Xbox one done worse?

The answer isn't what you'd first jump to. Microsoft played a bold hand and when Sony called them they've been backing down on all counts. The perception of greed or whatever nonsense one might point to isn't particularly relevant here - if Sony thought they'd make more money going the route of Xbox One they would have. For most people it's a question of economy. An xbox one debuted for 25% more than PS4 - a price difference that could account for the better part of two shiny new games. Sony's focus on the indie scene has ensured that there is at least a steady stream of content on their platform even if it's all stuff you could have played elsewhere already. Being cheaper and having access to more games is the more important part of the story because inevitably people buy hardware so they can have access to the software - and right now there is more software available on PS4. The mass market will not long remember the transgressions of the past when it comes to either platform and thus the ongoing struggle is going to be defined by the games that come out each month.

What this means for Microsoft is simple: they absolutely must make a push to get more software on their platform and, ideally, software that is both desirable and exclusive. Right now, there is little incentive to get the Xbox One over a PS4 because the latter has more games and, importantly, is the better platform for most multiplatform titles that have launched to date. But this time around the consoles are actually having to compete against the PC in a very real way - something consoles have not had to do thus far. That factor could have as much of an impact on the generation as anything Microsoft or Sony decide to do in the coming years.

 

[Atmos Duality]

Give it a year or so. They Xbone will do fine.
The mass gamer market has a memory like a goldfish.

I remember the horrific backlash against Sony for numerous things, and they did just fine with the PS3 anyway.