| Nicklesbe said: Sony's not the only one tight lipped. I have yet to see any PR from MS confirming the 1.2m which is huge and worth celebrating. The real question is why is MS being quiet about that? I can understand why Sony would be quiet, it's the same reason MS was quiet the past 10 months so not really a surprise. MS's silence on the matter is what is really troubling. |
I think they are showing some real restraint and foresight.
The $399 diskinect SKU in June started out big, then trailed off to the same ratio as before in a few days to weeks. We clearly saw sales fall off a cliff in May due to the announcement, so you had evidence of people holding off buying their X1s, then there was a big slowdown after the initial rush (July/August were terrible for X1), which showed strong evidence that the deal might have convinced many to simply move their purchases up to June instead of waiting.
This $329 and special holiday bundles / gift cards / etc happened, and the effect may end up being similar to even worse : a lot of people might have been waiting for the rumored big holiday specials from Microsoft instead of spending $399 with no game on one, so you had a bubble of holdouts, and likewise, people who might have otherwise waited until December or even beyond might have been convinced to go ahead and jump in while the mega specials were available.
There are many ways it can go from here. Microsoft might want to remain silent for now if they truly ARE going to go back to $399 in January, with no game to boot. That's worst-case scenario, and would mean a rapid return to around 2:1 PS4 advantage month to month, perhaps even 2.5:1.
I think even at $349, a bare X1 will fall behind PS4 again easily for at least the 1st half of 2015, but remain very competitive (say stick between 5%-15% per month on average)
At $329 and bundled AAA games, they could stay ahead all the way up until Sony decided to lower the price of the PS4.
Anyway, reasons for MS being pretty quiet :
(A)- They are going to return the prices to normal, because losing a huge amount of $ per console sold is simply bad business. It's particularly bad if they're getting a lot of '2nd console' buyers who have zero interest in XBLG subs, and who are really only getting the system for exclusives. With the typical multiplat favoring PS4, multi-console owners are not a good 'get'for Microsoft.
(B)- They want to look past the initial hysteria of the $329 crazy firesale sales rates to see what their projected baselines and competitive stature end up being. If they walk into 2015 with both November and December under their belts, and have a solid plan at keeping momentum (again, $349 is not enough imho), then they can start having more confident PR reports.
Think how dumb they would look if they went all-out trumpeting November NPD and/or December NPD, only to get killed 2:1 in the following months.
