mutantsushi said:
This is the only coherent strategy can MS could really have, and it's the OBVIOUS one that should have stemmed from their design decision to bundle Kinect. So it's all the more baffling why it has not been pursued. The mass understanding of Kinect's usage is voice control, which isn't even unique to it, so MS is just lucking out with a minor advantage in that perception. MS was boosting Kinect big before launch, but more and more launch games ended up dropping Kinect functionality that they had previously touted. Anybody who pays attention might think that indicates that actual game developer found that Kinect just wasn't that useful for games. If Kinect's gaming value is not demonstrated in several ways, which means several and many games, then it will not help sell a game console. Period. Personally, I'm not convinced of Kinect's value for gaming, vs. Six Axis, other platforms' equal voice control capability, and Sony Eye/Move. Six Axis just seems a better 'auxiliary' control (keeping hands fully in control of all buttons/sticks) vs. waving around body/hands for Kinect, and can pretty much accomplish similar 'gestures' that Kinect would do in such scenarios. So maybe they're not doing it because it can't be done.
Regarding GPU power and RAM, Sony basically lucked out there: until the last minute they were going to have only 4 GB of GDDR for total system memory, which would have been a serious downside vs XBone. MS took the conservative design approach there, assuming 8GB couldn't be reached with all GDDR, and so dedicated GPU space to ESRAM. GDDR ended up moving cheaper, and Sony's decision ended up allowing them 50% more GPU cores, along with other advantages. Their luck. But the memory difference isn't remotely enough to account for the $100 price difference, that comes down to the bundled Kinect. MS is realistically facing a tougher sell considering the GPU/memory and the bad PR stemming from their policies, but they are compounding it by not really emphasizing or selling the reason why they are charging $100 more than Sony. |
Great post sums it up, except sony being lucky?? They simply out manuvered MS and made correct decisons and had 1 solid message. no luck about it. They changed from 4 to 8, that was a decision, not luck, based on talking to the right people and looking at what devs needed. No luck involved.
