Manlytears said:
this is something interesting, something very attractive and tempting, but... I prefer the X1 wins in November .... I mean, if X1 does not win in November and December the thing will turn a complete massacre! If they can not sell the X1 at the current price (which in some bundles gets to have a "real value" within the category of the WiiU) i really think X1 will not be able to recover, and it will be like Ps2 era... |
I hope it fails TBH. That way we see it at $199 before long, instead of $299 by June '15.
But in fact, I expect a 1:1 split in the US for Nov/Dec, with each winning a month by less than 20% in total.
One has to remember that the start/stop unsteady demand for X1 throughout 2014 has led to many stores/channels being loaded with old X1 SKUs that sold poorly, or worse, are basically obsoleted by the new hot bundle deals. When people see $349 X1s w/game(s), they don't want to pay $399 for bare or $499 for bare+Kinect ever again, meaning ALL of those old X1s in the channel are dead weight unless externally bundled + discounts.
So the actual number of these bundles is probably limited to a fairly significant degree. I never see them in stock out and about, and I probably stop by a dozen+ electronic departments every week. Remember the Madden bundle? That thing sold REALLY well imho, but I never actually saw one in person. There simply wasn't enough room in the channel to fit them in, so it appears by analyzing NPD data that they only ran around 50k or so of that bundle, 100k absolute max, but probably nowhere near that.
If we believe that the new bundles are similar (50k-100k of each), then they will be like the Madden bundle : hard to actually find in stores because stores are hesitant to order new SKUs when they have tons of old ones collecting dust.
What does that lead to? Interested customers checking with places like Amazon which are the absolute most likely to have the special bundles in stock. Which will vastly inflate the normally reliable numbers. Amazon is best when tracking things that have full availability everywhere, but when something gets scarce, if Amazon has stock it looks like it's selling even more than it is, and if Amazon doesn't have stock (but it's available more widely in regular retail), then it could appear to be selling worse than it is.
All this is a long way around the bush, but I believe that :
(a) X1 *IS* outselling PS4 at retail at the moment
(b) MS is having trouble getting enough of these bundles into a stuffed channel retail situation
Amazon is the go-to solution for people on the hunt for these
(d) The ratio isn't as big as Amazon would normally indicate for the reasons listed above
(e) No more than 20% gap will be present for Nov/Dec in either direction, with a basic draw most likely, only exception being :
(f) If Sony LITERALLY does nothing, then I could see X1 carrying both months, maybe averaging 20% higher for the combo, but :
(g) Sony is incredibly likely to appear with the holiday combo specials very soon, but haven't announced yet because :
(h) It's a classic retail sin to pre-announce specials before they are available, as it harms sales of existing SKUs/inventory
