Based on what? Most of the S sales will not be forum gamers but people who want to enter next gen at a good price, and due to Xbox X shortages has been doing the legwork of most of the sales in Xboxes strongest countries and the XBS is ahead aligned with 360 and One, I would say it's doing exactly the job it was meant to otherwise, there might only be 6 Million XBS sold so far as the X has only just recently increased production.
Based of the number estimates I provided, which actually have a method & science behind them. AKA I'm not just pulling that number out of my bunghole to try making the platform look bad. Not just that, but there are a LOT of anecdotal accounts of Series S units on store shelves regularly, paired with retailers cutting the price, and throwing in 1 to 2 free games.
The people arguing that those price cut and free game throw-in measures are due to high popularity, aren't thinking clearly because if such were true, why have we not seen similar deals for PS5 and Series X, even? Those systems are even more in-demand than the S but aren't getting multiple retailer discounts or free games thrown in with a purchase, nor is the Switch for that matter. Just Series S.
Occam's Razor would lead me to believe those deals are in an effort to
encourage a bigger move of units into customers' hands to make up for softening demand.
Yes, I also heard Sony report they didn't ship what they wanted, the XBS is still up YOY, and the XBS console and the PS5 in the US are literally only a few hundred K apart and the Xbox Series just had a whole year without any games. If the Xbox had games this year it wouldn't be surprising that small gap was covered.
You can say Series had a whole year without any games, but you're still underplaying the fact PS5 went a LONG time this year in the US without a lot of actual stock. The stock situation started improving in mid-summer or so, and we've seen PS5 consistently outselling Series as a result. There is simply more demand for it, even in America, and the gap you're referring to isn't an actual indication of relative demand between the two products.
I'm not saying Series (particularly X) wouldn't sell more if the stock in the US were better. However, if stock for PS5 were better still in America as well, the gap would be wider in favor of PS5 even if overall sales for both grew noticeably due to better stock. And, that would be a more accurate representation of their demand relative to each other, at this point in time.
It's "controversial" because it's made up, you know it's made up, I linked to the evidence in multiple places why it doesn't align with the information that's out here which you intentionally chose to ignore so you can believe a fake number. That's the truth about it.
I find it curious you'll use a poorly estimated low number for XBS to push the narrative the S isn't selling when it's been leading sales because of X shortage, but you wouldn't look at OTHER estimates that have different number.
Okay, let's walk through this. At some point in early June, before Ampere's analysis numbers come up, Microsoft give a vague statement that Series is tracking ahead of their other consoles, which would include 360 and XBO. They don't specify in which capacity it's tracking ahead; could it be unit sales? Or division revenue? Or MAU? Who really knows, but it's safe to assume they mean unit sales. Even then, we don't know if they're referring to
sold-in (to retailers) or
sold-through (to customers); in the past, when Microsoft WAS providing Xbox unit sales numbers, particularly with XBO (before stopping in 2015), they used sold-in. Sold-in and sold-through are two different measures of unit sales with their own implications, and when Microsoft said they were tracking ahead of 360 & XBO, they honestly could have meant either.
However, for benefit of doubt we'll assume they meant sold-through. This statement was provided roughly 19 months after Series's launch. At a similar point in 360's time span, it had sold 11.6 million units (sold-through) globally. It's harder to find XBO's LTD at the 19-month mark, but we can assume it might have been roughly equal to that in best case or something a tad below it in worst cases.
Then, Ampere provides their report. In it, they provide PS5 sold-through numbers of 21.5 million. We
KNOW these are sold-through because they are sourced directly from Sony's fiscal reports, which indicate sold-through amounts. They also provide Series numbers of 13.8 million. We do not know if these are sold-through or sold-in; it would be a bit much to expect them to be sold-through (in hindsight) but they would still be a lot more accurate than, say, VGChartz's Series numbers, however it's easy to make the assumption they are sold-through because the PS5 numbers are sold-through and in such a report you'd expect the numbers to represent similar measures for all subjects. In hindsight, though, this was probably sold-in Series numbers for a reason I'll address shortly.
A couple of months later, Microsoft puts out a tweet on social media (IIRC to appeal to the CMA amid the ongoing ABK acquisition investigation) that includes combined sales figures for XBO & Xbox Series. Since these numbers were provided to appeal to the CMA's investigation, we can assume they were accurate, and likely went with sold-through as sold-in would have given higher numbers (and the point of this is that MS would want to appear like a smaller player in the CMA's eyes so go with the measure that would give you the smaller numbers). This number is 63.7 million. Now, we have had NUMEROUS analysts estimate that XBO lifetime sales were something in the 50 million'ish ballpark. There was an official report stating that XBO's lifetime sales were "less than half" that of PS4's. So less than (117 million / 2 =) 58.5 million.
However, this
single tweet now presents a problem. If Xbox One sales were at exactly 58.5 million, and MS are giving a combined XBO & Series figure of 63.7 million, then that produces a total of only 5.2 million Series X & S units sold-through, which is impossible unless MS are sourcing numbers from early-mid 2021 (which, why would they be doing that in the first place?). But we know they aren't, because the Nintendo numbers provided in that same tweet are roughly accurate to where they were at that time (confirmed recently by Nintendo's latest fiscal results), and Sony's numbers Microsoft provided were actually a slight overestimate by something like 5 million even by the point where Sony actually confirmed 25 million PS5s sold, let alone at the specific time the tweet was made (where the overestimate would have been higher).
So this brings us to a few things worth considering. One, it sort of confirms Ampere's numbers for Series back in June may have likely been sold-in,
not sold-through. Either that, or MS are providing Series sold-through numbers from the close of their FY 2021, which ended on May 31st, 2022. Meaning that if Ampere's 13.8 million were sold-in, then Series sold-through was 13.16 in BEST case because we also have to refer to MS's tweet, giving combined Series & XBO totals of 63.7 million. If you take the lowest possible end of XBO LTD numbers possible for the generation while still meeting previous professional estimates and suggestions, you would have at least 50 million. Statista provides a XBO lifetime total of 50.54 million which is on the lowest end for XBO but also provides the best-case scenario for Series sold-through at a point of 19 months into Series console lifecycle that clearly tracks ahead of 360, XBO, and also lines up very well with Microsoft's own combined figures tweet.
And so there you have it right there: at SOME point between May 31, 2022 and the time of MS making that tweet of combined XBO/Series sales figures to appeal to the CMA (assuming they were not lowballing their sold-through numbers, otherwise that will cause them a LOT of problems going forward in the investigation), Series sold-through sales were likely at 13.16 million. It has been roughly five months since that point, if you are to believe the figures from MS's tweet were at the close of their previous FY, so you can factor in roughly another 1 million - 1.5 million (ish) units having been sold globally during the time in-between (consider that MS gave a forecast before FY 2022 that they expected Series sales numbers to be flat QoQ for FY 2022 Q1 and Q2) and that gets you to an absolute
best case of 14.5 million Series sold-through as of roughly this time.
However, if you want to believe that the combined figures MS gave in their tweet were reflective of numbers at around that point in time (or relative to the start of Q2, which began in September), then that best-case scenario for total sales drops a lot, from a possible peak of 14.5 million to a peak of maybe 13.5 million (or maybe, maybe 13.8 million) to the current time for Series.
Those are the only realistic possibilities IMHO, and again they are still good for the brand. They are still tracking ahead of 360 and XBO (well, specifically if they are at 14.5 million LTD right now, though they may narrowly still be ahead of them if they're at the softer 13.8 million or even 13.5 million), it's just not a 25 million figure like PS5 and I think that's the part some of you are upset with because you want to imagine that the sold-through numbers for both systems is a lot closer. Well in all honesty, in the most probable scenarios, they simply aren't, but that doesn't mean Series is doing "badly". You need to stop subconsciously thinking that.
Likely based on fake numbers that have very little supporting it, and the only ones you want to believe while ignoring all the other estimates with better support. You have no reason to think 14.5 million is "likely" none zero, and you know this but agendas agendas.
Lol I
LITERALLY just explained my whole process & logic above in succecient detail. The funny part is you haven't done anything to show how my reasoning or estimates are wrong outside of just saying I'm purposely trying to give the numbers for an agenda.
No, an "agenda" would be running with VGChartz numbers and quote-tweeting them to give the impression those are sold-through numbers, when you are directly involved with the brand to the point you could just provide official sold-through numbers yourself if you wanted. An "agenda" would be, quoting outside sales numbers in general when your company has made it very clear they do not report sales numbers anymore, because the numbers you quote feed into a narrative of outselling your competitor in a territory and you hope by quote-tweeting those numbers you can influence other people to boost the optics of the console brand you are a representative of.
THAT's closer to an "agenda" than anything I am doing, and you know it.
I also want to point out that weak estimate is from months ago, so the PS5 has JUST sold 25 Million, but using your logic the XBS hasn't sold any units for months and is still at the fake 14.5 million?
Again, refer to the section where I explain my method & logic behind arriving to the 14.5 million. Also FWIW, it took Sony roughly five months to move an additional 4.5 million units globally.
Considering the possibility MS's numbers in their tweet were from June, and the general disparity in global popularity between the two brands plus the supposed drop in supply for Xbox (suggested through MS's own outlooks of flat QoQ results), them selling ~ 1.5 million globally in that same time frame is actually quite respectable and likely.
You're saying this with no evidence, meanwhile, there are reports popping up of Xbox being up here and there and an increase in this country over there, and little to no reports of XBS being down. Just recently in the UK, PS5 led that report but was down and XBS was up, just one example.
If you have a 100% increase in a country where you wee normally selling 1,000 units a week, that means you're selling 2K a week. The percentages may look huge but outside of that, the actual amount of units being moved isn't particularly significant.
You also can't trust every report, and it always helps to check over the info in those reports yourself, just to make sure things line up and HOW they line up.
Nothing, the XBS supply is fine, you're just having a hard time splitting the X from the S, if there were more X stock along with the S sales the sales units would obviously be higher. That's a problem for Microsoft to solve. The PS5 has it's main SKU as the main unit produced with PS5D not even being seen in some areas for months, where both X and S Xboxes are trying to share production and shipments to store shelves. These are two different business models.
Right, which feeds into the main thought expressed in the thread. There aren't enough SERIES X units in circulation to meet
demand,
because Microsoft has to split production resources between it and the
lesser-in-demand Series S, because the Series S has completely different specs compared to the Series X when it comes to the APU, components, not to mention needing its own RAM and storage (eating into those budgets).
You're overestimating the PS5 and underestimating the Xbox, and when it's noted the PS5 is falling behind the PS4 you are equating that to failure and the XBS is catching up, outside of the US and UK and Mexico, this isn't the case. You need to look at the whole picture and not the console war.
No, I equated it to that because you were either insinuating it (by not specifying context into WHY it was trailing PS4 in those markets), or you didn't specify enough to dissuade me from drawing that conclusion. I.e just jumping to one platform making percentage gains and the other platform trailing its predecessor, in a thread talking about lack of Series X units to meet demand, and our own back-and-forth over you disagreeing about relative low demand for Series S (which is driving your reason to dismiss my estimates).
So yeah, I'm going to draw a natural conclusion that you're referring to Series percentages being up over XBO & 360, and PS5's being down to PS4, as an insinuation to rising & falling demand, respectively, especially because quite a few OTHER people I've seen do this have done so for very similar reasons (especially for select markets like Japan) in the past.
What this says is PS5 AND XBS need to get more games out and can't just sell on new consoles smell alone. I brought up the PS5 in Japan as an example if it selling over 2 million units recently, but with software sales of an Xbox 360. That's not good and is a major disconnect that needs to be resolved before the honeymoon period is over.
And somehow you don't think that is going to be resolved with games like FF XVI or VII Intergrade? Again, if PS5 software sales are supposedly poor in Japan, than Series software sales would be absolutely pitiful, but when it comes to the Japan argument you only focus on PS5 needing to do something to up its software sales, not Xbox Series.
That's why I went into that big example with the Japanese market for both systems and I'm not going to repeat all of that again here. It's in the post if you care to read it.
I also used a similar example with the XBS, bringing up how there were a handful of good games, but then you had delays and disappointments like Halo Infinite, and that Microsoft needs to pick up the pace before the XBS honeymoon period is over two.
Different example type, different things weighing into it, heck even different scale of markets. It's not an equivalent example.
You just took the Japan sentence out of context for the console war when Made the same observation for both consoles. Then when on arguing about Xbox sales in Japan which I never even brought up.
I brought that up because it was my way of looking into the deeper picture WRT that market and putting some rather popular talking points under scrutiny. Plus, those points addressed were still pertinent to the topic itself.
The rest of your post is also just as fabricated, I didn't say the "S" was selling out "everywhere", and your gamepass complaints about not driving software sales relied on you referencing developers that complained about it but not the ones that didn't, I didn't even bring up what you were arguing about anyway.
The point about the "GamePass drives software sales" argument is that Microsoft themselves claimed that last year, then a ton of people started doing so when looking at MLB The Show numbers and (assumptive) numbers for Outriders, and also looking at player counts for those games. So you had MS themselves and lots of fans saying "GamePass increases sales numbers" as a blanket statement, a universal truth.
So if that were true, there would not be examples of games where that isn't true, yet that year we saw several, even in the case of a few indie games. Which is why I said that the idea "GamePass drives software sales" cannot be a universal truth, and should be applied more strictly and on case-by-case instances.
Your whole post is grossly dishonest and misleading.
I think you feel that way simply because it's contesting things WRT likely Series LTD sales numbers, demand levels etc. that you don't want to accept as being a probability or aren't ready to accept as being a probability.
Well a while ago a lot of folks would not have been willing to accept that GamePass growth on console is slowing down, yet Phil Spencer himself has come out and basically confirmed that. So if it's already happened before, other strongly held-to beliefs among the faithful can be proven wrong by the source itself in the future, if you don't want to believe what those like myself are making educated guesses on right now.
