Xbox One X (Scorpio) Prospects

[freedquaker]

It's been a long time I was here, and with the final announcement of X Box One X (hence forth XBOX), I'd like to share my personal analysis and compare its prospects to Playstation 4 Pro (Henceforth PS4P). Please note that ALL of my analyses so far have come true. I'd predicted that PS4 will sell at least twice as many as XB1, outselling it everywhere, even in the US. For more info, please see the following threads:

PS4 Lifetime Sales Estimates
http://gamrconnect.vgchartz.com/thread.php?id=178353&page=1

XB1 Lifetime Sales Estimates
http://gamrconnect.vgchartz.com/thread.php?id=178350&page=1

Those estimates have been revised later on, but the fact that PS4 will sell more than PS3 and likely than PS1, possibly reaching the PS2 levels, while XB1 will sell less than X360 remains true. Especially the latter was difficult to see as many people were overoptimistic about XB1 with the initial sales tracking over X360.

XBOX (X Box One X) prospects

Although we can now say the rivalry between PS4 and XB1 has been reversed, as PS4 was about 40% faster than XB1, and now XBOX is around 40% faster than PS4P, this is pretty much the only similarity, which will only have limited impact on the games. The reasons are various.

PS4 sold twice as many as XB1 and had better games because...

1) PS4 was initially cheaper, and mostly later on par in terms of price, which caused it to sell more. To the contrary, XBOX is a lot more expensive than PS4P while the console market is very price sensitive, severely limiting the market share. The smaller the market share, the smaller the developer mindshare and resources allocated to take advantage of XBOX.

2) PS4 had the goodwill and mindshare of the gamers and developers aside at launch versus the universally hated MS policies most of which were reversed. This led to additional emigration of Xbox users to PS4, creating more development support for PS4, and better optimized games on PS4. XBOX does not have any of this additional mindshare.

3) Multi-platform games are rarely optimized for a single console, and for which, you need a sizable user base. PS4Pro has already sold millions, and will keep selling at least at the triple rate of XBOX due to the enormous price gap. In terms of 4K consoles, very few multi-platform games will truly take advantage of XBOX while it has less than 25% of the market share versus over 75+% (between PS4P and XBOX).

4) PS4P support also depended on PS4 support, and without twice the number of PS4s out in the wild, there would be less of an incentive. There are half the number of XB1s, and chances for the support for XBOX is less than half, given a much smaller XB1 user base, and a practically non-existing XBOX user base at the moment, which is expected to increase at a much smaller pace than PS4P.

5) If supported fully, XBOX will be around 40% faster than PS4P but the problem here, is due to the cross platform development, for the vast of majority of the time, the difference will be confined to the resolution or the framerate. Between PS4 and XB1, it has made some impact, comparing 1080p vs 720 or 900p and 30-40 vs 40-50 fps. However, with the new upgraded consoles, most people do not have TVs larger than 1080p, and hardly anybody will choose a console by comparing 1440p vs 1800p resolution or 50 fps vs 60 fps, especially, if their TVs are not 4K. In short, to most people, PS4P and XBOX will be indistinguishable.

6) XBOX has zero exclusives. In other words, there are zero games that you cannot play on XB1 or other consoles. The same is true between PS4 and PS4P but the price gap between them is much smaller ($100 vs $250!) and if you are an XB1 owner, it makes a lot more sense to go buy PS4P instead of XBOX as you will have access to many more exclusives, provably better versions of the current games, currently better proven "upgrade" for regular games, for $150 less.

To summarize, PS4 sold a lot more and enjoyed much better optimized games not just because it was 40+% more powerful but also because it
- had the developer and gamer mindshare
- was cheaper
- was easier to develop (at least initially)
- had greater marketshare
- was not late to the party

XBOX does not have any of these advantages, save for the 40% greater horsepower, which will not be noticeable to most gamers and/or in most games. If you already have an XB1, then go buy an PS4P, not XBOX because at this price, the only games that will take true advantage of the hardware is 1st party games, and your money spent extra on PS4P (150$+) is wasted.

Microsoft should shoot the people who are in charge of marketing and management.