CGI-Quality said:
And I was expecting the exact opposite. I told people this wouldn't be a repeat of last year, mainly because the X1 has no price advantage/bundle advantage. The price cut, in fact, sealed the deal. Frankly, I don't get how anyone saw a clear win for the X1! |
I have to somewhat disagree. With a better strategy holiday 2015, in the USA, was Ms's to lose. Which really means over all it was MS's to lose. They screwed up strategically in a numnber of way and it meant handing the holidays to PS4, and effectively giving over the rest of the generation to PS4 in the one country where Xb one could have earned parity if not an eventual outright lead.
1: Halo 5 - Loss of splitscreen hurt them a lot more than they thought and a lot more than the Xb defenders care to admit; making the campaign not MasterChief-centric was an important evolution for the franchise, but one that should not have been the first Halo game of the generation. Also no $350 bundle for Halo 5 was a mistake. You have the expensive LE bundle for the true fans, you need the standard bundle for much broader market appeal. It's all well and goot having Halo 5 as an added option for existing bundles, but a special Halo-themed carry box at the normal console price does improve hype.
2: Gears Bundle being the loss leader for Black Friday - putting up a remaster vs a remaster is zero sum all things being equal. But all things were not equal, and the momentum is in Uncharted's favour with excitement over a confirmned early 2016 release date for UC 4, and a multiplayer beta that's on right now.
3: Losing CoD marketing rights - how would things be different if the BO3 limited edition console was a Xb one rather than a PS4, and of course first to get DLC and the console for officially sanctioned competition? This relationship was mutually very beneficial in the 7th gen. I wonder what changed? Did Activision see the writing on the wall and realise that globally they stand to benefit much more by alignbing with PS4 this gen, or was MS a bit too full of itself and either decided they didn't need CoD or they weren't willing to give Activision what they wanted. I'd be very surprised if the deal didn't have some preferential clauses that made it somewhat more favourable (or easier) for the relationship to continue rather than go over to Sony. For all that I look forward to the day the CoD becomes a shadow of its former self, it's still a big deal, and having the marketing relationship with that franchise is still valuable to the platform holder.
4: Tomb Raider - they really screwed the pooch on this one. The failed to capitalise on this franchise on so many levels. RoTR should have been Xb one's Black Friday $299 deal not Gears and the ROTR bundle should not have been retailer exclusive. Microsoft needs to convince people to get into the new generation AND choose Xb one. Right now the buzz is with PS4, so PS3 owners from last gen are going for PS4 and the see no particular reason to go for Xb one. 360 owners from last gen are as likely to go for PS4 as Xb one. So thrwoing out last gen offereings as an inducement to push the button on a Xb one is not going to work very well. Also releasing RoTR on 360 is a really nice thing to do for gamers, but is a bad strategy for trying to gain maximum benefit from buying 1 year of console exclusivity. You have 360 owners who are RoTR fans and leaning towards PS4 for their 8th gen pick. They get to play a very competent version of RoTR (lots of credit needs go to CD for giving 360 owners a worthy port) in 2015 AND they get to buy a PS4. Hence, they get the best of both worlds, first access to RoTR and the best / best selling 8th gen games console. PS3 owners who are fans of RoTR are largely on the fence: Do I buy Xb one for ROTR now, or do I wait a year, it is only a year after all and I will probably get a "GOTY" version of the game. Making RoTR the $299 BF bundle may have been enough to push those people off the fence and fall on the Xb one side. By comparison, even PS3 owners who wanted to give Gears a try last gen are not going to be convinced to buy the Gears Bundle if they are more inclined to stick with PS4. Tomb Raider was meant to be the thing that got PS3 owners to jump across to Xb one. But MS has done very little to entice these people aside from denying the game to PS4 for a year. It also may generally be more the case now than in the past that gamers are becomming more patient and less "I must have this now" in teir attitude. Given gamers are an ageing demographic, with age comes wisdom and also comes a greater willingness towards delayed gratification. Either timed exclusivity is going to become not very effective as a weapon in the console wars, or the length of exclusivity will need to be considerably more than 1 year in order to be effective.
5: Fallout 4: Firstly it released on the same day as RoTR, completely stealing ROTR's thunder, and secondly MS sunk a crap ton of effort into marketing this multiplatform game which would have been much better spent on marketing Tomb Raider. The FO4 bundle was universally available at all retailers. Under any other conditions Fallout 4 would have been a good marketing deal to have. But this time around it was bad. The PS4 version massively outsells the Xb one version globally, and in the USA the PS4 version outsells the Xb one version. I think it is literally the case that MS completely wasted its money on exclusive marketing for FO4 because I don't think they sold one more game than they would have if there was no exclusive marketing, and it's hard to be able to claim that there was any benefit to hardware sales. After 1 week, the PS4 version of FO4 has a bigger lead over the Xb one version than the PS4 version of CoD over the Xb one version of CoD after 2 weeks. MS gained pretty much no discernable benefit from the FO4 deal and at the same time it hurt Tomb Raider. MS really would have been better of not having a FO4 deal and sinking a lot more money and time into marketing Tomb Raider.
If MS had made some different decisions I think it's likely, albeit not guaranteed, that Xb one would have won Black Firday, won November NPD and would win Dec NPD. You might say losing Assassin's Creed was also a blow, but Ass Creed is ruined as a significant franchise now, unless Ubisoft can change things up and reinvigotate the franchise some how.
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