Backstory
I've been around for a long time , 32 years going on to 33 here in fact. One of the things I got to witness first hand was Microsoft's entrance into the gaming world back in 2001 with the original Xbox. This thing brute forced a mid range year 2000 level PC into a 400 dollar box you could plug into your TV and it knocked the competition out of the park with it's visuals.
Here's the thing though , it was a middling success at best. A proof of concept , MS could make a console. Unfortunately, they were roped into a pricey contract with Nvidia that kept manufacturing costs high for the lifetime of the console and to top that off , they were selling only around 400,000 systems a month world wide compared to the over 1 million Sony moved on a monthly basis. Despite some big hits and lots of console first ideas (broadband only internet play, digital game sales) it was simply too hard to compete with Sony and too much money was being lost on each console sold so , after just 3 years of availability work began on the successor - the only goal ? to make a console that beats the PS3 to the market place and is also powerful enough to render games at 720p resolution. So , in this specific case, 2004 became the last real year that any new (exclusive) content released on the original xbox to make way for the coming of the xbox 360 in 2005. For those keeping track , that meant the xbox was available for just 4 years before getting replaced. As we all know , it mostly worked in MS favor , their user based quadrupled from the xbox to the xbox 360 but forcing that much hardware into that box caused many issues with heat dispersal that lead to the red ring of death fiasco. But, these days the nearly 90 million systems sold are a testament to the power of moving on quickly to attempt to make something better.
Current Situation
Which brings us to the current situation with the xbox one. Here we have a piece of hardware that wasn't designed by the same miracle workers the original console had. Instead of a clear vision during it's conception , we had a cloudy mess - the media department that had sent 3 Zunes to die and a few microsoft branded phones and tablets to also die was now left to come up with a new xbox. One that focused on being the only thing anyone would want in their living room - it could stream all the video services , plug into your cable box so you could watch tv with an xbox overlay , let you listen to music and watch videos through the former zune marketplace , play bluray movies. Yeah this thing was poised to be quite the media hub , hell there were even plans to make a bunch of exclusive tv shows. Problem was they did all of this and then also shoehorned in the successor to the Kinect sensor. "people will want to watch tv and change the channel with their voice , people will want to leave the xbox one on all the time so it can just detect them and turn itself on so they can watch TV". In all this hodgepodge mess of ideas they kind of quietly also tossed in "oh ... and I guess it'll play games.... but we want each game disc to just be a one time use software key to convince people to just buy digitally and to save a few bucks we're going to really cheap out on the hardware that makes games look better". Basically what the media department built was meant to be a super fancy tv streaming box and somewhere along that time they decided to throw in some gaming hardware too. I wouldn't be at all surprised if this thing started out as a media device that could also play xbox 360 games. So fast forward a bit - 500$ vs 400$ xb1 VS ps4, more money for crappier looking games vs less money for better looking games on hardware built to do nothing but play them. The end result of all of this now ? there are over 30 million PS4 owners worldwide vs less than 15 million xbox one owners worldwide , the bulk of which can be found in north america. A sales situation that's not all that different from the original xbox. Not to mention that the console itself is once again a fairly large box with too many parts and a complicated , expensive to build CPU. Unlike the original xbox, it isn't even faster than the competition.
The point I'm getting at
Whether anyone admits it or not , we are now officially starting year 3 of the xbox one vs ps4 console battle. Most of the games MS has announced or even shared a peak at are going to be out by the end of 2016 - Fable Legends, Quantum Break, Gears of War 4 , Scalebound , Sea of Thieves. With some guesswork and assumptions we can expect Forza Horizon 3 as well. Looking farther ahead we have the Crackdown remake , Halo Wars 2 , Halo 6 and ... uh. Well that's what I'm getting at really. There's nothing stopping MS from just starting over again. Stretch out the big releases they have in the works on XB1 to last until the end of 2017 and bump a big release like Halo 6 to the next console. Bring out the 4th generation xbox console in 2018 with Halo 6 as a launch title. Make a console that specializes in games first and foremost, try and win back the audience they ignored in 2013. If things get really bad , they could even kill the XB1 next year, make Gears of war 4 the last big release and save Rares new game along with a couple other titles for a 2017 launch. Make this new device capable of playing xbox 360 titles from day 1 and allow it to run the top 10 best selling xbox one games via Backward compatibility (as well as all first party games).
Conclusion
Obviously I feel that this is more likely than not , if MS intends to continue in the console space they need a new box again and my best guess as to when Sony will have a PS5 ready is 2019 , the PS4 is selling so well that there's no reason to replace it sooner. MS only chance to win back a userbase is to come out at least a year before that in 2018. 2017 is also possible but will lead to some burnt bridges , the sega saturn to dreamcast effect. It will also mean a much weaker box compared to the PS5 but , for at least a couple years it will give them the most powerful console available. They could tout themselves "first 4k capable videogame machine" even. Either way, I think the writing is already on the wall for the xbox one. It's got 1 good year of software left followed by a couple years of whatever is almost done before we see a new system on the shelf.
What are GAFS thoughts ?
I've been around for a long time , 32 years going on to 33 here in fact. One of the things I got to witness first hand was Microsoft's entrance into the gaming world back in 2001 with the original Xbox. This thing brute forced a mid range year 2000 level PC into a 400 dollar box you could plug into your TV and it knocked the competition out of the park with it's visuals.
Here's the thing though , it was a middling success at best. A proof of concept , MS could make a console. Unfortunately, they were roped into a pricey contract with Nvidia that kept manufacturing costs high for the lifetime of the console and to top that off , they were selling only around 400,000 systems a month world wide compared to the over 1 million Sony moved on a monthly basis. Despite some big hits and lots of console first ideas (broadband only internet play, digital game sales) it was simply too hard to compete with Sony and too much money was being lost on each console sold so , after just 3 years of availability work began on the successor - the only goal ? to make a console that beats the PS3 to the market place and is also powerful enough to render games at 720p resolution. So , in this specific case, 2004 became the last real year that any new (exclusive) content released on the original xbox to make way for the coming of the xbox 360 in 2005. For those keeping track , that meant the xbox was available for just 4 years before getting replaced. As we all know , it mostly worked in MS favor , their user based quadrupled from the xbox to the xbox 360 but forcing that much hardware into that box caused many issues with heat dispersal that lead to the red ring of death fiasco. But, these days the nearly 90 million systems sold are a testament to the power of moving on quickly to attempt to make something better.
Current Situation
Which brings us to the current situation with the xbox one. Here we have a piece of hardware that wasn't designed by the same miracle workers the original console had. Instead of a clear vision during it's conception , we had a cloudy mess - the media department that had sent 3 Zunes to die and a few microsoft branded phones and tablets to also die was now left to come up with a new xbox. One that focused on being the only thing anyone would want in their living room - it could stream all the video services , plug into your cable box so you could watch tv with an xbox overlay , let you listen to music and watch videos through the former zune marketplace , play bluray movies. Yeah this thing was poised to be quite the media hub , hell there were even plans to make a bunch of exclusive tv shows. Problem was they did all of this and then also shoehorned in the successor to the Kinect sensor. "people will want to watch tv and change the channel with their voice , people will want to leave the xbox one on all the time so it can just detect them and turn itself on so they can watch TV". In all this hodgepodge mess of ideas they kind of quietly also tossed in "oh ... and I guess it'll play games.... but we want each game disc to just be a one time use software key to convince people to just buy digitally and to save a few bucks we're going to really cheap out on the hardware that makes games look better". Basically what the media department built was meant to be a super fancy tv streaming box and somewhere along that time they decided to throw in some gaming hardware too. I wouldn't be at all surprised if this thing started out as a media device that could also play xbox 360 games. So fast forward a bit - 500$ vs 400$ xb1 VS ps4, more money for crappier looking games vs less money for better looking games on hardware built to do nothing but play them. The end result of all of this now ? there are over 30 million PS4 owners worldwide vs less than 15 million xbox one owners worldwide , the bulk of which can be found in north america. A sales situation that's not all that different from the original xbox. Not to mention that the console itself is once again a fairly large box with too many parts and a complicated , expensive to build CPU. Unlike the original xbox, it isn't even faster than the competition.
The point I'm getting at
Whether anyone admits it or not , we are now officially starting year 3 of the xbox one vs ps4 console battle. Most of the games MS has announced or even shared a peak at are going to be out by the end of 2016 - Fable Legends, Quantum Break, Gears of War 4 , Scalebound , Sea of Thieves. With some guesswork and assumptions we can expect Forza Horizon 3 as well. Looking farther ahead we have the Crackdown remake , Halo Wars 2 , Halo 6 and ... uh. Well that's what I'm getting at really. There's nothing stopping MS from just starting over again. Stretch out the big releases they have in the works on XB1 to last until the end of 2017 and bump a big release like Halo 6 to the next console. Bring out the 4th generation xbox console in 2018 with Halo 6 as a launch title. Make a console that specializes in games first and foremost, try and win back the audience they ignored in 2013. If things get really bad , they could even kill the XB1 next year, make Gears of war 4 the last big release and save Rares new game along with a couple other titles for a 2017 launch. Make this new device capable of playing xbox 360 titles from day 1 and allow it to run the top 10 best selling xbox one games via Backward compatibility (as well as all first party games).
Conclusion
Obviously I feel that this is more likely than not , if MS intends to continue in the console space they need a new box again and my best guess as to when Sony will have a PS5 ready is 2019 , the PS4 is selling so well that there's no reason to replace it sooner. MS only chance to win back a userbase is to come out at least a year before that in 2018. 2017 is also possible but will lead to some burnt bridges , the sega saturn to dreamcast effect. It will also mean a much weaker box compared to the PS5 but , for at least a couple years it will give them the most powerful console available. They could tout themselves "first 4k capable videogame machine" even. Either way, I think the writing is already on the wall for the xbox one. It's got 1 good year of software left followed by a couple years of whatever is almost done before we see a new system on the shelf.
What are GAFS thoughts ?
