Black Friday 2014: XBO DEFINITIVE Edition

[binary solo]

fluky-nintendy said:

Disclaimer: This is NOT a sales prediction thread.

 

So that time of the year is dangerously approaching. Today I was doing my physical exercises and I was thinking to myself: this may as well be the Definitive time for XBO to make the difference and even maybe get ahead of ps4 in the US in particular. 

Black Fridays are well regarded as the most accurate barometer of sales trends on consoles. I know many people believe that XB360 users in the US are still waiting for a good reason to upgrade, so the Black Friday may be that impulsive factor to many that are still on the fence, and now that the remastered XBO is neck to neck in terms of price with PS4, it can recover that ~1million sales that separate both atm.

What people honestly believe? We all know this industry shifts a lot and even this everlasting sense of PS4 Domination can still change, at least in the US IF the cards are well played. XBO will have tons of games, including 3 major ones everyone is waiting for (COD:AW sells better on XB / Sunset Overdrive / H:MCC).

Really? Well regarded by who? Black Friday has pretty much always followed the sales trends not set them. The one time in the whole of the last generation it broke the trend (BF 2009 PS3>360) the trend when back to normal (360>PS3) the very next week and has stayed that way, aside from occasional weeks, ever since. So, in the absence of any major price adjustments the fact of PS4 outselling Xb one 9 weeks out of 10 means BF will be PS4's.

Price has been neck and neck for some time now and Xb one has not taken over 1st place week on week.

360 owners fall into 4 categories: former Xb og owners; former PS2 owners; late gen Wii converts (Kinect factor); new entrants into consoles who only bought 360. And that makes 47 million.

There were 15.8 million Xb og owners in the USA, once can assume almost all of them bought a 360, and you can assume most of them will also buy Xb one.

There were 53.7 million PS2 owners in the USA, only 28 million of those people bought PS3, leaving 25 million people who went somewhere else. Some went Wii, some went 360, some just went away. Most of those who went with a different console last gen are going to go back to PS4. My guess is the majority of the missing PS2 25 million went with 360.

Late gen Wii converts is an unknown quantity. But you can see that pre-Kinect holiday sales are about 1/2 of the post Kinect holiday sales. The 360 baseline went up about 10K in 2011 compared to the previous few years. These people are all about the motion control thing, and with Kinect being severely de-emphasised on Xb one I think these people can be largely thrown in the dustbin in terms of 8th gen sales potential, along with the rest of Wii's 7th gen blue ocean.

New entrants probably represents a small proportion of 360's sales. But they went with 360 first and they likely will remain on Xbox. But they represent the churn in console sales as some non-blue ocean people who bought a console last gen won't buy one this gen, that goes for all consoles.

Personally I think there are about 40 million 360 owners up for grabs in the USA. 15 million are pretty much locked in to Xb one leaving 25 million as a swing market, and most of them are former PS2 owners who are well disposed to PS4. 15 million guaranteed Xb one owners includes everyone who will buy a Halo game on Xb one. Most of them have played all the Halo games already. And most of them won't be buying MCC, or at least they won't buy a Xb one for MCC, they'll buy a Xb one for Halo 5 and probably buy MCC at that time. Along with a much sweeter special edition Halo themed console.

If you consider PS1 had sales of >38 million, it means PS4's likely minimum is about that total. This represents the gen 5 and 6 Playstation base. 28 million stayed with PS last gen. 10 million left and went somewhere else. 10 million are almost certain to come back because they are multi-generation PS owners and PS4 is a very attractive proposition this time around.

In terms of other games. CoD:AW has the exclusive marketing on Xb one. So it should make a big difference on CoD week. But after that it won't make much difference.

Sunset Overdrive. Really? That's what's counted as one of Xb one's big guns this holiday? I sure hope it's a good game because I think Insomniac are a great developer. But this is a new IP, in a genre that receives almost no hype, and a genre that is not big on Xb one, and in terms of Xbox gamers the developer is an unknown quantity, and had a bomb in it's first attempt at a non-R&C game.

So basically there is not much to indicate Xb one will sell significantly higher than PS4. And even if it does there is no evidence to suggest that will represent a shift in the market towards Xb one so that is will overtake PS4 globally in the USA.