slowmo said:
S.T.A.G.E. said:
Microsoft didnt agressively market because they barely had anything to market outside of the Kinect from 2011 outside of two games since the Kinect launched in Gears and Halo on replay. Sony beat them basically the whole year until fourth quarter when people knew they could get their hands on a discounted Xbox system. Microsoft will cut the price of the 360 at E3 or their reveal. They haven't cut the price competitively in a while. If they do its for brief periods of time to screw with the consumer base and get quick sales before bringing it back to normal. I have a feeling looking at the sales now that they'll try again but they will drop the price for good. This is the final measure to which Microsoft has pull out all the stops against Sony. In the end all Sony had to do was price their console competitively and outpace them in making games as they always do. It was a matter of time, but when you have a casual device that sells twenty million....well it kind of slows things down for the competition...wouldn't you agree? It was tortoise vs hare fight and sometimes the race isn't always for the swift.
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My point was simply that they really hadn't thrown everything at market share like Sony did in 2008/2009. They didn't money hat any franchises, they didn't agressively push any risky new IP's, they didn't push the price down in Europe anywhere near enough despite figures clearly showing the demand has been waning for years. Sony needed to come back where as Microsoft were content to cash in on their device and use this gen as a building block. Nobody is going into next gen now thinking Microsoft will sell a console to you then abandon it in 4 years like last gen, they have given the brand a huge lift.
The launch aligned sales prove it was a tortoise vs hare situation but at the end of the day Microsoft have made more money from their device, while Sony have kept their brand image that at one stage may have been at risk (which is potentially worth billions obviously for this gen).
P.S. Just to educate those saying Microsoft is in third place again, it did actually finish in second last gen, not that it mattered given how far adrift they were.
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Of course Microsoft moneyhatted franchises and they still are. They agressively pulled out their checkbook last gen to measure up and they'll continue to do it until their first party measures up. Their development was not on par with Sony and we'll see how the new teams do under pressure. At Sony you had one team split into twos pumping out two to three titles so Microsoft will have to do a lot to measure up. Microsoft had no idea of what they were getting into with motion gaming until Sony dropped primesense. Sony wanted to make their peripheral device by themselves.
Microsoft made more money, of course no one is doubting that. Sony was bleeding through the ears for how much they packed into the PS3 and made the developers lives hell, but everyone stuck with it and everything turned out fine. They are profiting and in the end thats all thats matters. They've been profiting on the PS3 for 3 years now.
Microsoft has learned a lot from this gen to make them a formidable threat to Sony next gen. Lets hope they capitalize on it and dont throw it all a way.
