Gen-over-gen marketshare report

[Squilliam]

psrock said:

Squilliam said:

psrock said:
Can those who believe MS will win next Gen show me how, just how this going to happen.

Microsoft has been a more successful publisher than Sony and have made better picks for 3rd party exclusivity. Though whether this will continue is debateable.

Microsft has a still viable motion controller whereas Nintendo has effectively abandoned theirs so they may have an advantage with parts of the casual market next generation. They also have the ability to mimmick many of Nintendo's own innovations with Smartglass. They have the option to expand Kinect into more than games with education and shopping also potentially being killer apps.

Microsoft likely has a more loyal online userbase than Sony and Nintendo because many of the people whom joined up over competing services did so because of better social services like party chat, teaming up, and good voice communication so having friends on  the service is likely more important. Since it is easier to play with friends on Live the people who value it are the ones whom want to play with friends vs those who just want to play against anyone/randoms.

Microsoft has a lot more money than Sony and a greater willingness to spend it than Nintendo. Microsoft is taking a beating on their home front of Windows because of the encroachment of Android and Apple which makes the EDD or whatever they call it nowadays an important segment of their business as it contains their hardware, mobile and console elements which are all very important growth areas both in terms of bolstering the Windows part of the business and in expanding into new areas. They have every incentive to give as many resources as possible to this division. They have the nasty combination of incentive and ability.

Everything you just said works in two countries.

 Kinect: It went from the fastest selling product to a non issue. And it sold most of it in the US.

Live: It lost the reason for paying for it years ago. People have moved on from way more popular social network (MySpace), this is nothing.

As far as marketing, big launches won't win generation. 

Kinect is still important because it is still selling. If people still want to buy Kinect then Kinect 2.0 ought to be a reasonably viable choice as well. It is something unique and likely as valuable at the moment to Microsoft as the Halo franchise if not more so given the slight decline in the fortunes of Halo over the generation. They can solve the issues of the space requirement, finger tracking, 4 people tracking and reliability of voice/gestures with the march of technological progress. I think of Kinect as another important franchise like Wii Sports. It is something unique and therefore they can address an exclusive part of the market like for instance how Nintendo has a core fanbase who rabidly buys their titles.

I wouldn't say that everything applies to two countries. Just because Microsoft hasn't sold as well as Sony in say Europe doesn't mean that they won't sell a good number of consoles in that region. The Xbox 360 lead over the PS3 in the U.S.A is more significant than the deficit to the PS3 in Europe. We have Europe at 23-28M and U.S.A. at 38-23M respectively. The European market is also complicated further by the greater penetration of PC gaming and the Valve console if it ever releases is likely to be more successful there as well.

Overall I would say that Microsoft is my pick as the one to beat in the next generation because they are strong in some big markets and they have the money and experience now to expand to other nations as well.