2nd August Global HW, USA &UK SW Up. TLoU Week. PS4 Beasting.

[Zanten]

todd2r said:
I still cant get over the Xbox one performance. Where is all the Xbox fans? Why is no one buying it? Its a good machine. Im not speaking sarcastically here. Its a legit question. Where did the Xbox fans go?

Proooobably a mix of reasons it's having trouble building momentum early on.

-Original DRM policies led to the widely held (possibly true) belief that the console flat-out would not work if you were in an unsupported country. Basically, if you were an Xbox Fan in a non-released country, and you wanted to play Ryse or Dead Rising 3 at launch, you couldn't even IMPORT a console to play those games. Massive blowback, probably left a sour taste in the mouth of many a non-launch country, and even though importing is obviously an option now, the basic feeling of '**** you' might have lost them some previous gen customers, widening Sony's lead in Europe and Asia. (Definately doesn't help that the PS4 has a massive head start on a lot of markets. xD )

-The whole Snowden thing was reeeeeally bad timing. Even though I don't believe the Kinect was intended as a spy camera or anything like that, it was REALLY damaging to have this camera peripheral which, at the time, was said to always need to remain connected, even as leaks were suggesting the U.S. was actively spying on pretty much everybody with the help of companies like Microsoft. Think the Germans were REALLY not pleased, which might partially explain why the PS4 is outselling the X1 3:1, when the PS3 only outsold the 360 about 2:1.

-While perhaps minor, during that DRM policies time (which was a reaaaaally long week for Microsoft,) the same region locking suggested that troops stationed overseas wouldn't be able to use an Xbox One console. That... was not received well, and in the U.S., the words 'This Company Isn't Supporting The Troops' can, in some regions, be tantamount to marketing suicide.

-Then there's the sluggish disconnect of the Kinect, the sluggish removal of the paywall over apps and such, and a mix of other nitpicks and irritants that just sort of kept the Xbox One was building a good head of steam, along with the fact that a lot of Microsoft's pre-launch PR just reeeeally didn't help their cause. It also doesn't help their hold on the wider market that the original reveal focused heavily on television and sports features that simply weren't available outside the U.S. at launch, and probably STILL aren't available in a handful of its current launch markets, and might not be available in its FUTURE launch markets.

 

 

So, all that ^ is stuff that pretty much kneecapped them. The thing about that is, if you fall out of grace, it can be reeeeally hard to get back in it. It took Sony years of solid groveling to pull it off, and the PS3 still got outsold by the Xbox 360 by, like, seventeen million units or so in the U.S. Even minor things, like the resolution differences of Xbox titles going to PC, get magnified because a chunk of the available market is eyeing the Xbox One like a distrustful parent, WAITING for it to draw on the walls again, and the moment it so much as picks its nose, BACK IN THE TIMEOUT CORNER.

If the Xbox finds equal footing with Sony, it's likely going to take years, and LOTS of groveling.