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Forums - Gaming Discussion - Ideal month of launch for a console?

 

Best Month for Release?

March 6 27.27%
 
April 1 4.55%
 
May 0 0%
 
June 0 0%
 
July 0 0%
 
August 0 0%
 
September 2 9.09%
 
October 5 22.73%
 
November 8 36.36%
 
December 0 0%
 
Total:22
Robert_Downey_Jr. on 03 February 2019
The_Liquid_Laser said:

I voted March, but that assumes that you know you have a good console on their hands.  The Switch launched with Breath of the Wild, and it seemed like Nintendo knew they had a strong game on their hands.  (It was essentially the only game featured at E3 2016.)  In this situation you get a strong launch month, and then you get a strong holiday season, so you maximize sales that way.  This is also a risky month, because, if your console has a disappointing launch then it will be really obvious (like 3DS).

So the safe month would be November or maybe October.  All of the console's hardcore fans and going to buy it regardless, so launching near the holidays makes it look like its a hot item, and the press can say the console is in short supply and so forth.  But really this is a conservative move.  It shows that you don't have the confidence to release outside of the holiday season.  I suppose it is better to be safe than sorry though.

But September and October don't leave much time for sales to fall off before you have hardcore guys AND holiday shoppers with it in their hands



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Jason76 on 03 February 2019

To me November makes sense. That's when people are holiday shopping. December would be pushing it a little bit late in that respect, and October would be a little early.



The_Liquid_Laser on 03 February 2019
Robert_Downey_Jr. said:
The_Liquid_Laser said:

I voted March, but that assumes that you know you have a good console on their hands.  The Switch launched with Breath of the Wild, and it seemed like Nintendo knew they had a strong game on their hands.  (It was essentially the only game featured at E3 2016.)  In this situation you get a strong launch month, and then you get a strong holiday season, so you maximize sales that way.  This is also a risky month, because, if your console has a disappointing launch then it will be really obvious (like 3DS).

So the safe month would be November or maybe October.  All of the console's hardcore fans and going to buy it regardless, so launching near the holidays makes it look like its a hot item, and the press can say the console is in short supply and so forth.  But really this is a conservative move.  It shows that you don't have the confidence to release outside of the holiday season.  I suppose it is better to be safe than sorry though.

But September and October don't leave much time for sales to fall off before you have hardcore guys AND holiday shoppers with it in their hands

That is a good point. 

But production of units is another factor.  If you release in March you can have a huge inventory built up.  Then you can gradually stockpile until the holidays.  Again all of this assumes that you are confident the console will be successful.  March is a riskier month, but with a greater reward.



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vivster on 04 February 2019

Completely irrelevant unless the manufacturer does not expect the thing to sell for more than a year.



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00Xander00 on 04 February 2019

Completely Depends on business strategy.
Generally the best time (for MS/Sony) is towards the end of the year such as September, October or November. I would generally say October as pre-orders will keep that month busy just before the sales shoot up in Nov/December. So the console will have 3 healthy months instead of just 2.
...But
if it takes a while for a good line-up of 1st/3rd party games (particular 3rd party in Nintendo's case), then early on in the year (but not January or February) to let game releases build up towards Christmas so that player can choose between a good selection of games (like the Switch did).

Last edited by 00Xander00 - on 05 February 2019

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Trumpstyle on 04 February 2019
RolStoppable said:
Robert_Downey_Jr. said:

Do you actually think they could launch in September or October and NOT have big holiday sales?  Like that bump is gonna be there regardless

That's actually possible, because it shouldn't be taken for granted that Sony gets things right with the PS5. If they commit a blunder while Microsoft does a decent job with their next Xbox, we'd be looking at a PS5 in a slump in October and the first 2-3 weeks of November (assuming a September launch) and then a rather modest holiday season, because the word going around would be that Xbox is the new console to buy. Of course sales go up during the holiday season, but you can't take it for granted that it's always going to be big.

I think that's the catch with this thread. Despite it never being said, your assumption is that PS5 and Nextbox will be a repeat of PS4 and XB1 while I don't use the same premise because it has yet to be seen what Sony and Microsoft have in mind for their next consoles. For the PS4 it wouldn't have been detrimental to launch in a month other than November, but for the XB1 it would have been, because the holiday launch masked its problems for a while. I guess I could simply ask you if you think that a non-holiday launch would have been better for the XB1.

Reading your posts, I take it November 2019 would be ideal launch for PS5 with the Last of us 2 as a cross-gen title?? Then Sony can have several cross-gen titles games throughout 2020 and have 1-year lead on Microsoft, it's like a 3x win.

For Xbox two, they probably launch fall 2020 with Halo infinite as a cross-gen title but if Sony has 1 year lead it's already over right? You seems to have analyze this stuff a bit to much but what is the ideal launch time for the next-gen consoles, 2019 for PS5 seems to the best strategy but Sony probably still stuck in the old world and will launch in 2020.



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