IGN: Xbox One could hit its stride in 2015

[Aura7541]

celador said:
With the releases going forward into next year, X1 needed to be hitting it's stride now. Second tier launches, some big third party releases, and some good exclusives. It will improve over the next few months of course, but the fact that the console is already under 100k again is not a positive sign.

The first half of next year is very one sided right now. Bloodborne looks great and will sell some systems, the fans of the Souls series are are very much 'hardcore' gamers. The Order has received some negative previews, and may turn out to be completely average. But, it is a very easy game to market, a shooter with werewolves and a cool steampunk London. There are a few smaller Sony exclusives like Tearaway Unfolded and Ratchet and Clank, but those will not move systems. Japan should also start to look a bit healthier next year, with Persona 5, DQ Heroes and MGSV pushing systems (the latter is essentially an exclusive there). Sony have third party marketing deals with Battlefield and Batman in the first half of next year as well which are comfortably bigger franchises than Evolve and The Witcher.

MS on the other hand have Screamride, Fable Legends, State of Decay 2 (?) and the two marketing deals for the first half of next year. Personally, I can't see the two exclusives moving consoles at all. I think the holiday line up for X1 will be great next year, with Quantum Break, Halo 5, Rise of the Tomb Raider and almost certainly Forza 6. But until September, I don't think X1 is looking strong on the exclusives front. Sales will still be up of course, they always are in a console's second year, but if anything I think the gap will be wider.

MS needed to start making ground some point this year if they were ever going to. MS have started the race while Sony are still on their warm up lap, but Playstation is winning by some distance in sales. MS can still make the X1 a successful console commercially, and I think they will, but it is pointless to specualte about how it could ever catch PS4, because it won't.

Hit the nail on the head. I sort of disagree with games like Tearaway and R&C not moving systems. I think with good advertising and appealing to the non-shooter audience, Sony can move PS4s to fans of other genres. And after seeing gameplay footage of The Tomorrow Children last night, I was really impressed with the countless amount of things you can do in that game and the game just screams "different". These games help differentiate the PS4 from its competition while also appealing to the mainstream audience. This is a problem X1 has on top of having its biggest exclusives consolidated to Holidays 2015. You need to have a consistent flow of unique exclusives and that's what the PS4 is doing.