LudicrousSpeed said:
thismeintiel said:
I'd say yes. Looking at sales numbers alone won't tell you much. Instead you have to look at the big picture. While I think the XBO will sell ~40M-45M in the end, the problem is what it took for them to get to those numbers. Namely firesales. It seems that a lot of the budget for Xbox went into subsidizing the price. While this helped, it still didn't lead to them taking back any market. In fact, I think this is what lead to my next point.
It's more important to look to see if MS see it as a failure. And on this issue, I think we can safely say yes, they do. After the firesales, the budget for Xbox seems to have been slashed significantly. Before, they were bragging about having AAA exclusives, even if a few were timed, but now their time is reserved for pushing timed indie exclusives. Quite the downgrade. This also cut the budget on 1st party games, which led to cancelling a few of their larger ones. And when we started to see a lack of 1st party games, they move the remaining ones to PC, giving the XBO even less of an identity, in an attempt to compete with Steam. Advertising also took a hit, whether it be for the XBO, itself, or AAA 3rd party advertising deals.
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What firesales? There's never been a huge difference in the price of the PS4 and Xbone. Right now for the base bundles they retail within $30 of each other thereabouts? The Xbone has weaker hardware, it should cost less. What it "took" for them to potentially get those numbers is turning around a console that was DOA to most of the market thanks to a shitty reveal and some even shittier policies. Part of that was removing Kinect and pricing more in line with their competition. That's not a "firesale". $500 for the Scorpio is not a "firesale", lol.
Budget "significantly slashed", and yet theyre about to launch the most powerful console ever, which wouldn't be cheap to R&D or build. They showcased plenty of AAA exclusives at E3. And funny to see you say "downgrade" in regards to indies, I don't remember you being so dismissive of them when Sony would showcase them all over their presentations.
I have to give a deep, hearty chuckle to the idea that games like Fable Legends or a Phantom Dust reboot were two of their "larger" first party games. I assume you're also including Scalebound, which was a third party moneyhat like Bloodborne, but also looked like gutter trash, but I'll allow it if you want to cling to it to make your case about larger titles being canceled. But that's still only one, which was canceled out of pity, not any sort of budget issue, lol.
The identity of the Xbox brand is just fine now that Phil has turned it around. Regardless of what you'd prefer to believe, most people don't give a shit about games being on PC and a console. That's why Sony makes sure every copy of SFV says console exclusive. They want you to know you can't buy it on Xbox, they don't give a shit if you know it's on PC, they know the overlap there is not big enough to matter. Also I'm shocked to see that advertising took a hit, seems like every day we have a thread on here shitting on MS advertising of some sort. It got so bad that we got a thread complaining that they advertise their contollers too much.
I have to fail your post, but I give you credit for finally making it through a post about MS and Xbox that included your hypothetical and theoretical financials and didn't include a remark about how maybe potentially this could possibly be the last Xbox console from Microsoft if it doesn't potentially generate possibly enough theoretical revenue to satisfy your guesstimated margin MS is looking for.
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I guess the truth hurts sometimes. How about last year's Summer Sale? XBOs were available for $249. The price of the PS4 at that time? $349, a $100 difference. Yep, firesale. And before that, they were constantly having sales to make sure it was $50 less than the PS4. They were definitely not making money on the HW.
And you can ignore the fact that they have cut spending on Xbox, but it's still true. Even a casual observer can watch E3 2013/14, and see a big difference between them and 2016/17. And there's nothing wrong with Indies. But, that's all MS had. Oh, except AAA multiplat games they can't afford to even buy exclusive content for. At least, they didn't announce any. Again, a far cry from the 360 days and 2013/14.
You can dismiss those exclusives, but what took their place? Nothing. So, MS lineup is looking bare, so they are filling it with indies. And gamers are taking notice. The Xbox is down YOY, while the PS4 was up 2M for the 1st half of the year. Again, it's losing its identity with gamers as MS push Windows. It being on PC is causing fewer gamers to pick one up.
And, yes, this could be the last Xbox. If the XBX completely fails, MS is definitely going to be questioning making a XB2. If they try one more time, and they have another XBO (or worse), they 100% will be done.
