How many units does Xbox One need to sell to be considered a success?

[Normchacho]

Mr Puggsly said:

Normchacho said:
I mean...historically speaking it's sales will eclipse those of consoles that were considered successful.

But there's no doubt it's a failure overall.

They had to have expected it to outsell the 360, and probably by a comfortable margin.

It's not going to sell nearly as well as the 360, it's not going generate anywhere near the revenue they wanted. Lower than expected hardware sales, software sales and Gold subscriptions. Really early price cuts and deals, the nonexistent roi from Kinect 2.0 not to mention the enormous amount of money in advertising and added features (bc, 4k Blu Ray). Financially it's a huge failure for them, it didn't give them the control over their ecosystem that they wanted and it hurt their image in the industry.

That doesn't mean it's a bad system, but it's absolutely a failure.

Lowered expectations isn't an overall failure. I'm sure they would make changes if they could do it all over again, but they still found a fairly comfortable spot. I think Scorpio is proof of that.

You're right about price cuts, but they also designed X1 to not be a huge financial loser with modest specs. One reason they were able to cut the price drastically was the removal of Kinect.

You're trying to make BC sound like a desperation move, but in reality its something they did because they could, it was desired, and it people still buy 360 games. X1 BC doesn't just make X1 more desireable, it moves software. If Sony could figure out BC on PS4 I genuinely believe they would also offer it. But you know PS4 did get? PS2 emulation.

4K Blu Ray is not an expensive feature to add. But you're pretending it's because the competitor didn't do it.

Oh, I agree it hurt their image. But so did charging for online play, so did killing OG Xbox early, so did RRoD, etc. Xbox's competitors have also done things to hurt their image. But there is potential for recovery after screw ups, X1's image objectively improved since launch.

Bold: The problem I have with that is then you can say nothings a failure. I'm sure sales expectations were dropped dramitically for the Wii U after they say how it's sales dropped off after launch, but it still was a failure due to an inability to meet initial expectations. That's a much more dire scenario of course, but the principle stands.

I'm honestly not sure what you mean by "Its something they did because they could". It's a value added feature, but it costs them money to implement and it's not really something that's going to drive software sales in any significant way. If you have 360 games you don't need to buy software, and they keep giving out 360 games in bundles or they get remastered for the Xbox One anyways. They did it to give themselves good press and to drive Xbox One sales. The PS2 emulation on PS4 is a bad comparison because you have to buy those games. Trust me, as a consumer I'd rather they just let me put in my PS2 games (not that I actually still play PS2 games) but Sony doesn't need to, so they didn't.

I'm not pretending 4K Blu Ray is anything. If 4K Blu Ray is $10 more to implement per system than normal Blu Ray then that's millions of dollars in lost revenue every year to support what is really a niche format. Once again, it's a value added feature. It makes them look good, and they can use it in advertising to try and sell more Xbox Ones, but they wouldn't have needed it if the Xbox One were selling better.

I'll reiterate.

Between lower per-unit revenue, lower software sales, less Gold subscribers, and weaker than expected sales. The Xbox One is going to have an roi that's likely a fraction of Microsofts origional expectations. That's a failure.