| NobleTeam360 said: Looks like stuff is falling back to pre holiday order to me. |
Seems like it. I also think that it's a win/win for MS/Sony the way it's going to play out.
From MS's perspective, coming into this holiday things were somewhat disastrous. Their ROW sales were bad, US/UK sales were decent but not leading, and the total install base was not that great yet. All news and PR related to X1 were not that great, and getting beat for a year straight in their home territory was virtually guaranteed if they didn't do something major. Their strategy had never really been a hugely profitable one, so the only thing that was at stake was their pride. I remember posting a predicted price-drop thread for the X1 way back in July/August, and people simply couldn't comprehend that there would have to be one before the end of the year for things to get jump-started.
And they succeeded in jump-starting things pretty well in the states and UK. The amount of value presented with some of the X1 deals was just incredible. Multiple games, gift cards, and massively lower cost of entry across the board. It will probably tail off considerably now, but the mission to get the install base jump-started and get some positive PR out there (by way of avoiding terrible PR!) was accomplished for sure. We can tell that Microsoft has wisely written off the X1 outside of the territories that are most lucrative for them, which seems to strongly indicate a new plan moving forward.
For Sony, they continue to win globally with ease, all by doing basically nothing. A very limited GTA bundle, a nearly unmarketed LBP / Lego bundle that was also fairly limited, and of course the regular $399 sku plugging away. It very much lines up with Sony reserving their real price cut for PS4 all the way to 2015, which will either be at E3 or November 2015. It is actually somewhat beneficial for Sony to keep their unit profits intact, and not to overdo it too much in all territories. If Sony had price-matched the PS4 at $329 with a free game coupon, sales would have been bananas for both consoles going well over 1M/mo for Nov/Dec imho. $399 is still a pretty high price of entry, and it's my opinion that the window for those sales will wind down considerably over the next few months. Really anything over $300 should start to disappear other than value-add bundles before 2016 at the very latest.
$299 will bring MASS numbers in, along with both Sony and Microsoft really getting 1st party moving. Gears and Halo, Uncharted and Gran Turismo, and all the rest, we should see some pretty epic sales for 2015-2017, with the first full year that includes the first true $299 msrp being insanely huge.
