Can the XBOX One be saved?

[mutantsushi]

OK, it's just baffling when people call out linking the two items,
that you continue to link them even while claiming some difference.
Great. They're different, so don't link them together.

The 360's launch was way better than the XBone's in terms of market share, RROD not withstanding.
Due to network effects like buying what your friends play on, establishing early market share lead is important for overall marketshare and lifetime sales. XBone and 360 launches are just not equivalent there.

XBone's persistent lead was not just due to Year 1 sales with the remainder being up to "improvements"... Network effects stemming from that Year 1 lead (and PS3 not really competing for several years after it launched, due to the hardware being hard to develop for) were what drove the 360's persistent lead and large net marketshare thru much of it's lifetime. PS3 in fact eventually overtook it worldwide (not in core US/UK markets) *in the face of this development of 360*, so those developments in fact weren't driving 360's success: they were just stemming the tide against the late-in-the-game "realized" PS3, whose sales festered for SEVERAL years (after it's 1 year launch delay) before it really came into it's own... At which point 360's marketshare quickly declined, especially in ongoing sales (not accumulated sales from when PS3 was no-show). RROD was a financial hit for MS in the short term, but establishing early and persistent market dominance was the important thing, even if it would be more perfect to not suffer RROD issue.

I mean, it makes sense to be happy about future development of the XBone platform if you have one and like it and want it to be better, but it's not really a marketshare shifting thing. Sony will also be developing it's platform. Including multimedia, online TV/movies type of features, and voice recognition, PSEye games, and... (duhduhduh) "cloud integration".

XBone does not seem set to repeat a 'come from behind' PS3 type of performance because it doesn't have the slow-to-materialize advantages that PS3 had (more power even if it is hard to tap, blueray winning the format war). This gen, MS has:
Lower marketshare (with even core 360 markets not showing an underlying demand advantage, with PS4's sales sold out), which leads to network effects for future sales,
Higher price (without offering a perceived value like Blu-Ray, while Kinect2 doesn't seem to be attacting broader interest: even MS launch exclusives that touted it during development ending up removing/reducing it's gameplay importance),
and both lower performance AND more restrictive to code for (DDR+ESRAM vs. GDDR).
Basically, like taking the disadvantages of PS3 and throwing away the advantages.

But the good thing is that both platforms were designed to be more economical from the start, so both can be profitable and healthy in terms of ongoing development even if the XBone has less marketshare, even 30% worldwide (vs PS4). Obviously there will be implications for both platforms if one has very strong dominance (as milked by 360 lastgen with PS3 only coming into it's own very late), but MS should be able to continue investments in it even if they give up on the hope of even 40/60 marketshare. Honestly, given the experience of last-gen, I don't think that MS ever expected to do as well this gen as last with Sony launching simultaneously this time (and having learned alot of lessons from PS3), so I don't think MS will necessarily be all that far off their expectations. Although unsold merchandise would go against that reading, so maybe they really are true believers who fell for unrealistic expectations.

Honestly, if MS continues underperforming marketshare-wise, it may be in it's interests (probably in a few years' time of worsening marketshare) to ditch MS' unique requirement that online game servers be XBone-only, which is a restriction that Sony itself doesn't impose. As the underdog, it may be easy to sell the console for it's exclusives if it can also play (multiplatform) games with a majority who own PS4. And that seems like a good thing for gamers, to me.