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[Heisenberg007]

At least 3M Xboxes. Xbox would need to tank at 2M for that 6:1 ratio

Microsoft does more sales in holiday quarters vs Sony

I don't think that last bit is true.

Last year, according to estimates, Microsoft sold ~8.5 million in the entire year. Sony sold ~7.1 million just in the last 3 months.

 

[MasterCornholio]

Didn't u check their emails exposed? Bring playstation out of business that is the goal for them.

Depends if they are capable of doing that.

 

[James Sawyer Ford]

I don't think that last bit is true.

Last year, according to estimates, Microsoft sold ~8.5 million in the entire year. Sony sold ~7.1 million just in the last 3 months.

I meant that relative to their own sales for the year, Xbox is very holiday heavy compared to their sales for the rest of the year

 

[Mibu no ookami]

At least 3M Xboxes. Xbox would need to tank at 2M for that 6:1 ratio

Microsoft does more sales in holiday quarters vs Sony

The Xbox that has sold an estimated 4.15 through 3 quarters is going to sell 3 million in Q4? Without a single exclusive to push it?

That's insane and again I'd bet you my account that they wouldn't.

Look at Amazon's best selling video games right now, and see the 4 ps5 skus that are charting higher than any xbox sku.

 

[kruis]

That's a good point -- the quality of service -- and warrants a separate discussion.

At ~25M subscribers, users have to sit through long queues, especially if there is a big game that a lot of people wants to play (e.g., Starfield, GTA, etc.). If they increase their subs by 400% to ~100M subscribers, they will also have to improve their xCloud capabilities by more than 500-800% to have any sense of a decent-quality service that doesn't frustrate users.

That would require some serious investment.

And if they do invest a lot more money into this, I wonder if their goal would still remain 100M subscribers. I reckon, with their additional expenditures, their goal for revenue (breakeven and profits) will also go up.

That seems like an infinite loop to me -- a path with no success.

Cloud gaming will never be profitable. Just imagine what would happen if MS had a sudden breakout GAAS success with 10-20 million people playing only to have it fizzle out after six months because that fickle audience hooked onto another company's F2P game that suddenly went supernova.

How do you scale up from a few million concurrent players to ten-twenty million people? Cloud server infrastructures can scale up quickly if you need compute power and/or storage, but in this case you need cloud gaming servers with dedicated 3D graphics hardware that can handle multiple users, Those kind of servers don't come cheap and it takes enormous investments to create cloud gaming server farms. Another problem is lag, so those cloud gaming server farms need to be built in multiple geolocations to be close to where the audience is, otherwise European gamers would have a terrible experience playing a 4K 60fps game from a distant US server and vice versa. But now you've got all that expensive hardware sitting idle for most of the day, because most people are playing games in the evening between 19:00-23:00.

I just don't see how cloud gaming will ever be our future when it's so much easier and cheaper for MS and Sony to let players just run games on their own PC/console. The only reason why MS and Sony both offer cloud gaming services is FOMO.

 

[Ronin_7]

At least 3M Xboxes. Xbox would need to tank at 2M for that 6:1 ratio

Microsoft does more sales in holiday quarters vs Sony

I think this is not what you meant to post.

You mean % speaking, Xbox sells more than PlayStation in the Last quarter of the year because Raw Numbers will still have PlayStation massively outselling Xbox in Q4.

 

[Thirty7ven]

I meant that relative to their own sales for the year, Xbox is very holiday heavy compared to their sales for the rest of the year

Is this an indication that Xbox ends up selling mostly to kids in the U.S?

 

[Heisenberg007]

Cloud gaming will never be profitable. Just imagine what would happen if MS had a sudden breakout GAAS success with 10-20 million people playing only to have it fizzle out after six months because that fickle audience hooked onto another company's F2P game that suddenly went supernova.

How do you scale up from a few million concurrent players to ten-twenty million people? Cloud server infrastructures can scale up quickly if you need compute power and/or storage, but in this case you need cloud gaming servers with dedicated 3D graphics hardware that can handle multiple users, Those kind of servers don't come cheap and it takes enormous investments to create cloud gaming server farms. Another problem is lag, so those cloud gaming server farms need to be built in multiple geolocations to be close to where the audience is, otherwise European gamers would have a terrible experience playing a 4K 60fps game from a distant US server and vice versa. But now you've got all that expensive hardware sitting idle for most of the day, because most people are playing games in the evening between 19:00-23:00.

I just don't see how cloud gaming will ever be our future when it's so much easier and cheaper for MS and Sony to let players just run games on their own PC/console. The only reason why MS and Sony both offer cloud gaming services is FOMO.

Very, very good point!

 

[Heisenberg007]

I meant that relative to their own sales for the year, Xbox is very holiday heavy compared to their sales for the rest of the year

Both consoles sell more during the Holiday season. That's just the nature of sales for most products - not just consoles.

But to your point, "Microsoft does more sales in holiday quarters vs Sony," that's not true because, otherwise, Xbox would have sold more than 7.1 million in last Holiday season because that's what PS sold.

 

[Mibu no ookami]

If starfield had been as good as it should have been it would have helped. Unfortunately for MS a okay not great game isn't a game changer

If Starfield was an 11/10 it still would have performed better on PC and still would have been hampered by being on GamePass.

 

[T0minator]

Soooo the PS5 sold more this past quarter than Xbox has done all year

 

[The Stig]

this doesnt surprise me.

The series X/S will almost certainly be the first xbox gen I skip.

The One ruined the brand for me. I literally ONLY played Forza 6 on it.

 

[jroc74]

I think that Xbox has done many things well, the problem is that Sony has also done many things well and until Sony makes a serious mistake like the price of the PS3 and the cell processor there will be no way for Xbox to compete with Playstation

This seems like the only possible way for MS to compete.

For Sony to literally fuck up on a grand scale.

For everyone that says MS can do X and Y to fix things....its not like Sony are twiddling their thumbs chilling.

 

[James Sawyer Ford]

Both consoles sell more during the Holiday season. That's just the nature of sales for most products - not just consoles.

But to your point, "Microsoft does more sales in holiday quarters vs Sony," that's not true because, otherwise, Xbox would have sold more than 7.1 million in last Holiday season because that's what PS sold.

You're not following what I'm saying.

If Microsoft sells 9M consoles in a year, and 5M of that is in the holiday quarter, then 55% of their own sales are in the holiday window

If Sony sells 25M, but 12M are in the holiday quarter, that's 48%. Relatively less holiday heavy. In other words, Sony sells better throughout the rest of the year.

 

[James Sawyer Ford]

Is this an indication that Xbox ends up selling mostly to kids in the U.S?

Yes, I think Xbox is more of an impulse holiday purchase, especially with the Series S which we knows is the highest seller

 

[Heisenberg007]

You're not following what I'm saying.

If Microsoft sells 9M consoles in a year, and 5M of that is in the holiday quarter, then 55% of their own sales are in the holiday window

If Sony sells 25M, but 12M are in the holiday quarter, that's 48%. Relatively less holiday heavy. In other words, Sony sells better throughout the rest of the year.

Okay, now I get what you were saying. But what you wrote was implying the other thing I was responding to. The "vs. Sony" part to be precise.

 

[Panajev2001a]

They've just spent 80 billion dollars only to see their market share decrease and GamePass continue to plateau...

Exactly my point… as they make more and more content skip PlayStation this would hurt Sony too. Hence why Sony is now feeling the pinch of depending too much in third parties: they rose to success because they put third parties first and MS is now coming after those third parties.

 

[Sweep14]

The Microsoft board isn't console warriors or fanboys.

I think Phil Spencer could convince them to give him the money for GTA6 exclusivity or timed exclusivity (say 3 months), but they're not blind. They see the dwindling growth in GamePass and they see the dwindling hardware numbers.

GTA6 exclusivity would cost billions of dollars, but it's literally the only thing that could keep Xbox in the game for at least another year or so. Phil is on a short leash.

IIRC Sony has the Next GTA marketing partnership

 

[James Sawyer Ford]

Exactly my point… as they make more and more content skip PlayStation this would hurt Sony too. Hence why Sony is now feeling the pinch of depending too much in third parties: they rose to success because they put third parties first and MS is now coming after those third parties.

But at the same time, Sony has never been more dominant.

So, the idea that they can just buy the biggest third party on the market and then remove them from Playstation does seem far fetched in the short term. There is a serious risk of those games losing complete relevance if they were to do so.

They end up hurting themselves more than they do Sony, just look at Starfield - it's not like Sony missed out on much by not having it. Microsoft has far more to lose at this point.

 

[YeulEmeralda]

Microsoft was created in 1975. Xbox exist since 2001. Soon, Microsoft will have spent more time in the gaming business than time without it. Them having a 10/15 years plan is at best a very optimistic one or arrogant in my opinion. Outside of monopoly, that would fix all of their problems and give them a lot of money, there is not a lot to understand.

Of course good to you if you like Gamepass as it is now. But 10 years in tech is a long time. Even during the PS3 era I remember talking with a friend about what kind of console would the PS5 be and if there would be one or just a web service like the java games that I was playing back then. 10 years. 2 possible new generations of consoles. By then Xbox could not exist anymore, or they could buy Steam...
One thing I am certain, a lot of people like you have profited of it, and that is better than not having Gamepass exist at all. Hope that it continue that way and that Gamepass don't poison gaming like some of us fear.

Fifteen year plans are nice but the world moves too fast. Remember when Apple released the iPhone and changed an entire industry overnight?

 

[Mibu no ookami]

Exactly my point… as they make more and more content skip PlayStation this would hurt Sony too. Hence why Sony is now feeling the pinch of depending too much in third parties: they rose to success because they put third parties first and MS is now coming after those third parties.

Sony has relied less and less on specific third parties in the last 10 years. They've never had as much success with 1P that they do today.

They've also had success in promoting specific 3rd parties who otherwise would not have had any success like Sifu, Stray, Deathloop, and Kena.

Microsoft can keep buying 3rd parties, but it isn't going to help. Individual 3rd parties aren't as important to PlayStation as PlayStation is to them. All you're doing is reducing revenue for these companies and largely elevating the revenue of other companies, which is why T2 was in favor of the ABK deal. It's less competition for their own software.

IIRC Sony has the Next GTA marketing partnership

There is absolutely nothing that has ever stated this.

 

[Randall365]

I don’t think Gamepass will ever make sense. Most gamers will not play more than a couple of titles in a month. Giving people access to hundreds of games unnecessarily and making them pay for it is not what people want. If Microsoft want to win this gen they need to get FiFA, Modern Warfare and Madden as exclusives somehow, scrap the confusing S series and undercut the PS5 with the X by £50 and chuck in a triple A game.

 

[Killjoy-NL]

The One ruined the brand for me.

That's kind of what Spencer talked about in that interview where he gave up on competing with Sony:

Last-gen was the most important gen, in particular due to digital games libraries.

MS fucked up with the Xbox one, while digital sales took off and people started to build their digital libraries.
With all that money invested and no way to trade in those games, it's a major incentive to stay with the platform you've built your library on.

Hence why it's not just a matter of releasing good games and why Spencer addressed it specifically.

Last-gen is when Xbox lost.

 

[nosoynadie22]

But at the same time, Sony has never been more dominant.

So, the idea that they can just buy the biggest third party on the market and then remove them from Playstation does seem far fetched in the short term. There is a serious risk of those games losing complete relevance if they were to do so.

They end up hurting themselves more than they do Sony, just look at Starfield - it's not like Sony missed out on much by not having it. Microsoft has far more to lose at this point.

I think that if PUBG had never been exclusive to Xbox, Fortnite would never have surpassed it.

 

[Crayon]

They might be past the point where they can start recovering with a bunch of games. I'd like to say that will always work, but it's a somewhat novel situation. They've turned it into a mostly budget brand but with a super hardcore base. That seems to have made it's own new kind of mess aside from the tradition of unexciting 1p output.

 

[The Stig]

That's kind of what Spencer talked about in that interview where he gave up on competing with Sony:

Last-gen was the most important gen, in particular due to digital games libraries.

MS fucked up with the Xbox one, while digital sales took off and people started to build their digital libraries.
With all that money invested and no way to trade in those games, it's a major incentive to stay with the platform you've built your library on.

Hence why it's not just a matter of releasing good games and why Spencer addressed it specifically.

Last-gen is when Xbox lost.

Forza 6 was the only exclusive for me.

Forza 7 was on PC (also was SHIT, homologation bollocks) and I played gears 4 and 5 on PC.

Xbox one and series X/S have ZERO appeal to me.

This is coming from someone who has a lot of love for the OG Xbox and the 360.

MS done fucked up, big time.

I have played my PS4 and PS5 almost as much as my PC. over the years

 

[demigod]

That's kind of what Spencer talked about in that interview where he gave up on competing with Sony:

Last-gen was the most important gen, in particular due to digital games libraries.

MS fucked up with the Xbox one, while digital sales took off and people started to build their digital libraries.
With all that money invested and no way to trade in those games, it's a major incentive to stay with the platform you've built your library on.

Hence why it's not just a matter of releasing good games and why Spencer addressed it specifically.

Last-gen is when Xbox lost.

I disagree, phil is just trying to shift the blame back to don mattrick. There were xbox fans who bought a ps4 last gen that went back to xbox this gen. There weren’t any “digital only” console at the beginning of launch last gen. Digital games on consoles didn’t really blow up until just recently. THIS imo was the most important gen for them to redeem themselves but they completely botched it.

They are so out of touch with gamers. They thought Redfall and Starfield looked good, lol. They thought their 2 way sandwich strategy was good with the series x and potato box. Their mindset is to kill sony instead of releasing quality games first to their customers.

I wish Mod of War or someone would unban osirisblack so I could ask him wtf was he smoking when he said xbox would have the better games coming into this gen.

 

[Killjoy-NL]

I disagree, phil is just trying to shift the blame back to don mattrick. There were xbox fans who bought a ps4 last gen that went back to xbox this gen. There weren’t any “digital only” console at the beginning of launch last gen. Digital games on consoles didn’t really blow up until just recently. THIS imo was the most important gen for them to redeem themselves but they completely botched it.

They are so out of touch with gamers. They thought Redfall and Starfield looked good, lol. They thought their 2 way sandwich strategy was good with the series x and potato box. Their mindset is to kill sony instead of releasing quality games first to their customers.

I wish Mod of War or someone would unban osirisblack so I could ask him wtf was he smoking when he said xbox would have the better games coming into this gen.

If that's how you see it, fair enough, but the numbers speak for themselves and support Spencer's claims.

Xbox was never going to get back on their feet this gen. That was just wishful thinking.
Lots of people were just in denial.

Irt digital sales, over the course of last-gen digital sales started picking up and people started building their digital library, this gen it's going to continu, making things even worse for Xbox.

 

[demigod]

If that's how you see it, fair enough, but the numbers speak for themselves and support Spencer's claims.

If phils claims were true, they wouldn’t be touting xbox series consoles as the fastest selling just last year.

 

[Killjoy-NL]

If phils claims were true, they wouldn’t be touting xbox series consoles as the fastest selling just last year.

They still have to try to sell their consoles.
That's business/PR.

I mean, we have the data...

 

[buenoblue]

Like I've said in other threads I've bought every other Xbox console day 1, But as an owner of a gaming PC I never bothered to buy a series x. And for the first 2 years of the gen I paid like £10 for gamepass. I haven't had gamepass for a year now. Signed up for one month to play Starfield and played that game for like 3 hours.

I buy every console day one for the last 35 years and pretty much buy every major game that comes out too. Microsoft have somehow managed to put me off buying their consoles and games. And I'm not even paying for gamepass either. Baffling.

I just can't see how they can turn things around. It's like Phil thinks of every scheme possible to get Xbox on top. Gamepass, day one pc, buying publishers and studios. But he just doesn't put that focus on doing the single most important thing...making great games. He just wants to cheat his way there.

 

[Sanepar]

Like I've said in other threads I've bought every other Xbox console day 1, But as an owner of a gaming PC I never bothered to buy a series x. And for the first 2 years of the gen I paid like £10 for gamepass. I haven't had gamepass for a year now. Signed up for one month to play Starfield and played that game for like 3 hours.

I buy every console day one for the last 35 years and pretty much buy every major game that comes out too. Microsoft have somehow managed to put me off buying their consoles and games. And I'm not even paying for gamepass either. Baffling.

I just can't see how they can turn things around. It's like Phil thinks of every scheme possible to get Xbox on top. Gamepass, day one pc, buying publishers and studios. But he just doesn't put that focus on doing the single most important thing...making great games. He just wants to cheat his way there.

Sometimes looks like for consumers that even if they buy everything people would rather quit gaming than buy a Xbox.

 

[nosoynadie22]

I'm confused, on Twitter they told me another story.

 

[Deerock71]

Man...the Switch is unfazed by the next-gen competition; Nintendo's in a unique position in that it could completely pull the rug out of their competitors if they chose to.

 

[Woopah]

Man...the Switch is unfazed by the next-gen competition; Nintendo's in a unique position in that it could completely pull the rug out of their competitors if they chose to.

They are in a good position for Switch 2, but I don't think they can pull the rug from PS5. PS5 will still have the advantages of:

• Superior online
• Established fanbase for the biggest third party franchises
• Stronger visual performance

 

[kruis]

I don’t think Gamepass will ever make sense. Most gamers will not play more than a couple of titles in a month. Giving people access to hundreds of games unnecessarily and making them pay for it is not what people want. If Microsoft want to win this gen they need to get FiFA, Modern Warfare and Madden as exclusives somehow, scrap the confusing S series and undercut the PS5 with the X by £50 and chuck in a triple A game.

It doesn't matter how much money MS could offer EA, they still won't consider the the idea of making EA Sports FC an Xbox exclusives even for one second. Fifa/Sports FC is not only a huge seller in the territories where Xbox doesn't sell, it's also a GAAS money maker. EA makes as much as $1.5 billion from Ultimate Team on top of the sales of 10 million game copies. MS would have to hand over at least 2 billion dollars only to make up for those lost sales/revenues and there would be a huge amount of money on top of that because EA would be seriously pissing off their most important customers: PS gamers.

It wouldn't make any sense for EA to ever do this. Much simpler to give Sony an exclusive online mode for a limited time in exchange for a lot of money . In that case they'd only piss of relatively few Xbox fans instead and there'd be no real financial harm done.

 

[Deerock71]

They are in a good position for Switch 2, but I don't think they can pull the rug from PS5. PS5 will still have the advantages of:

• Superior online
• Established fanbase for the biggest third party franchises
• Stronger visual performance

I'd counter by stating that isn't in portable form, but you'd tell me that the PSWhatever-it-is is now portable (in home) and I'd counter Wii U.

 

[bitbydeath]

I disagree, phil is just trying to shift the blame back to don mattrick.

Xbox One is Phil’s fault.
Don delivered on games for X1, it wasn’t until Spencer arrived that they stopped supporting it properly.

X1 and PS3 started out the same way.
X1 was expensive because of Kinect, PS3 was expensive because of Blu-Ray, Cell, and the emotion engine.

Only PS3 fought back with games after they redesigned the console to be cheaper.

 

[Unknown Soldier]

Looking at those Xbox numbers, it would not surprise me in the slightest if Microsoft went all-in with CoD exclusivity; that may be their only Get Out Of Jail card right now since Activision Blizzard is imploding.

They signed 10 year contracts to bring CoD to Sony and Nintendo platforms as one of the sweeteners to try and get the regulators to approve the ABK acquisition. They cannot go all-in on CoD exclusivity without breaking these contracts and they do that you better fucking believe the regulators will be coming back with some antitrust investigations and MS doesn't want to fuck around with that considering their history.

 

[kazuyamishima]

I'd counter by stating that isn't in portable form, but you'd tell me that the PSWhatever-it-is is now portable (in home) and I'd counter Wii U.

But, it's portable everywhere, with a decent wifi connection of course.

Whilst is not a switch by being portable everywhere with or without an internet connection., is far from the WiiU.

 

[Deerock71]

But, it's portable everywhere, with a decent wifi connection of course.

Whilst is not a switch by being portable everywhere with or without an internet connection., is far from the WiiU.

You're correct; it's a peripheral to the PS5, and will be nothing more than that.

 

[James Sawyer Ford]

I wish Mod of War Mod of War or someone would unban osirisblack so I could ask him wtf was he smoking when he said xbox would have the better games coming into this gen.

OsirisBlack was a fake tech guru that only thought teraflop counts mattered. Everytime we get to a new generation he is used as a "source" of spec leaks and they are never true.

 

[phant0m]

Switch selling like crazy for outdated hw

Switch’s library is chock full of absolute bangers and proof that 4K visuals and immersive atmos audio are not prerequisites to a great experience.

 

[phant0m]

this doesnt surprise me.

The series X/S will almost certainly be the first xbox gen I skip.

The One ruined the brand for me. I literally ONLY played Forza 6 on it.

It’s insane how much Microsoft put the gun in their own mouth and pulled the trigger last gen. They came out of the 360 gen really strong even with the RROD issues. EVERY gamer I knew had a 360.

All of them got PS4s.

 

[Unknown Soldier]

Sometimes looks like for consumers that even if they buy everything people would rather quit gaming than buy a Xbox.

Microsoft has long been a company disliked by the average man on the street customer because of the poor reputation of Windows and that's the Microsoft product almost all consumers are familiar with.

It's always a double-edged sword as a monopolist. You are fortunate enough to be able to force the world to use your product, but the unfortunate side of this is the resentment you generate by forcing the world to use your product, especially when it's far from perfect like Windows is.

 

[Bojji]

Man...the Switch is unfazed by the next-gen competition; Nintendo's in a unique position in that it could completely pull the rug out of their competitors if they chose to.

They can't do shit, they will never replace Sony and Microsoft as core gamers choice if they keep releasing systems that are one generation behind and without proper third party support.

They mostly have audience that without switch wouldn't be interested in console market at all.

 

[Panajev2001a]

Xbox One is Phil’s fault.
Don delivered on games for X1, it wasn’t until Spencer arrived that they stopped supporting it properly.

X1 and PS3 started out the same way.
X1 was expensive because of Kinect, PS3 was expensive because of Blu-Ray, Cell, and the emotion engine.

Only PS3 fought back with games after they redesigned the console to be cheaper.

I think it is a good parallel, Sony fought back very hard with PS3 after a rocky launch.

 

[Bojji]

I think it is a good parallel, Sony fought back very hard with PS3 after a rocky launch.

And Phil is only talking about good stuff coming when there is not much to show.

Ms has massive amount of developers and ips, with good managment they can make some amazing games every year. But they aren't known for good managment...

 

[Neo_GAF]

i really dont understand, why people are buying more sony stuff than ms stuff.
ps-plus is more expensive, the whole ps4/ps5 thing is complicated, games are more expensive, except for a few exclusives(most people dont care about), almost the same games.

still everyone buys a ps5 for fifa, cod, fortnite and diablo. i know 5 more people at work having a playstation.

 

[Bojji]

i really dont understand, why people are buying more sony stuff than ms stuff.
ps-plus is more expensive, the whole ps4/ps5 thing is complicated, games are more expensive, except for a few exclusives(most people dont care about), almost the same games.

still everyone buys a ps5 for fifa, cod, fortnite and diablo. i know 5 more people at work having a playstation.

Outside of US Xbox brand was always quite small, even in 360 days Sony was winning in Europe and in a lot of other places.

It's only MS fault for treating the world outside us as less important.

Or maybe people just like PS more than Xbox?