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The days of seeing stories like 'PS4's outselling Xbox by almost 2-to-1' could be over as Microsoft looks to have called time on the console sales war.
Last week saw the Big M announce its quarterly results - yes, yes, fiscal announcements, yawn - but the interesting thing noted by Game Informer was the lack of Microsoft's usual hardware shipment metrics.
When quizzed on this a Microsoft source responded saying it was no longer using such figures as its measurement of success. Instead it would be focusing on user engagement, choosing Xbox Live figures as its leading stat. Essentially Microsoft has made a tacit announcement that, in terms of hardware sales at least, it has lost the sales war of this generation of machines.
Long-time industry analyst, Michael Pachter, told Fortune yesterday that he believes Sony's PS4 is set to have another excellent holiday period, outselling Microsoft's console, and would probably do so with or without the price cut which has given it price parity with the Xbox One.
"Microsoft should cut price only if it cares about how many consoles it sells," he went on to say.
And, given that it's both halted reporting on its own sales and refused calls for a price cut of its own, it sure looks like Microsoft has now stopped caring about such figures. Or at the very least wants everyone to stop talking about it...
(Score: 2) by schad on Tuesday October 27 2015, @12:03AM
It may also be that their real profit source is XBL. Obviously you need an XBone to subscribe to XBL, so it's not like it's completely distinct, but... Is MS better off spending $100m on marketing and discounts to sell hardware at razor-thin margins to people who will probably buy one game (Halo 5?) and then never again send a dime to MS? Or is that money better spent getting the people who already have XBones to re-up with XBL? I speculate that the latter offers a considerably better ROI for Microsoft.
It's a total guess, but I think it's a good one. Microsoft has been pushing subscription-based online services in a big way, pretty much across all their product lines. And they were pimping the online features of XBone since before it launched.
(Score: 2) by Gravis on Tuesday October 27 2015, @04:32AM
Is MS better off spending $100m on marketing and discounts to sell hardware at razor-thin margins to people who will probably buy one game (Halo 5?) and then never again send a dime to MS? Or is that money better spent getting the people who already have XBones to re-up with XBL?
well there's a false dichotomy if i ever read one! there are lots of things MS could do that dont involve any of that! i have some ideas on what they could do but frankly, i prefer to hear their PR lies rather than that they are succeeding in any meaningful way. :)
(Score: 5, Funny) by GreatAuntAnesthesia on Tuesday October 27 2015, @10:00AM
> i have some ideas on what they could do but frankly,
I too have a long list of ideas for things that Microsoft could do. Most of them involve the words "insert", "spiky", and "sideways".
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Hairyfeet on Tuesday October 27 2015, @11:36AM
How EXACTLY is it a false dichotomy? Its the same issue Sony found with their promoting of OtherOS with the PS3, you had a ton of users buying PS3 (which were sold for pretty damned big losses, nearly $300 at the time) that were only buying them to use OtherOS and never bothered to buy games for the things. If we look at the history of Xbox we see that for the vast majority of its history? Its sold at a loss. AAMOF the original Xbox NEVER made a profit and the X360 has only made a profit these past couple of years, so what happens if somebody only buys for Halo* and doesn't really buy squat for it after that? That console is a complete loss for MSFT so it only makes sense to not spend a ton marketing to people that simply will never bring a ROI.
This is of course ignoring the rotten elephant in the room which is MSFT crippled the Xbone to bundle the Kinect by going with DDR3 over GDDR5 which means the kind of online multiplatform shooters that a game like Halo would appeal to? Yeah they are gonna play all their multiplats on the PS4 because they will look better and they always will. Its a shame really as AMD made some nice (if weak) APUs for the Xbone and PS4 but as someone who builds a lot of AMD APU systems I can tell you that memory is king with the AMD APU, the faster the RAM the better, so why would a Halo player stick with the Xbone when the better versions are on PS4?
*.- This is VERY possible as I had several customers who did exactly that with the original Xbox, they bought it for Halo I and bailed when they grew tired of it, in fact the Xbox my boys had came from one of those customers as once he was done with Halo he sold it to me cheap and went to Quake Arena and CS for the PC. Those types of players seem to be VERY picky about the games they play its like trying to court Battlefield or WoW players, they may play your game for a bit but then its right back to where were before.
ACs are never seen so don't bother. Always ready to show SJWs for the racists they are.
(Score: 2) by Gravis on Wednesday October 28 2015, @04:05AM
How EXACTLY is it a false dichotomy?
it's a false dichotomy because he presents two possible options for Microsoft and asked the reader to choose between them when in reality Microsoft has many other options.
perhaps you don't understand the concept. [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 2) by Hairyfeet on Thursday October 29 2015, @06:41PM
And what other options would those be? Remember we are talking about whether or not they should be pushing a particular game, that is pretty much a "yes/no" question, nothing false dichotomy about true false statements.
So if you believe they have many other option wrt Halo 5? Feel free to list them, but as somebody who deals in home theaters I can tell you that the kind of person that plays Halo? VERY picky and kinda obsessed with graphics and multiplayer and like it or not the xbone simply has no leverage with these players, not now that multiplats will always have higher definition and look better on the PS4.
ACs are never seen so don't bother. Always ready to show SJWs for the racists they are.