May 2016 NPD Thread! Hardware and software numbers up!

[Dadrik]

Shadow1980 said:

Intrinsic said:

Here is my ressoning as to why i say the XB1 is a lost cause. 

If you look at your late bloomer OXB theory, you will notice that when MS was "late blooming" at the time sony had already played all their cards. There were no substantial price drios to do anymore.

Now, sony can match anything MS does price wise if they want to. The PS4 is currently more exowmsive than the XB1 nit cause its costlier to build but because the demand is there. If MS drops to $250, sony can match them..... then what? 

A dominant system getting a price cut does not preclude another less popular system getting a boost from a similar price cut. It never has. To go back to the sixth generation again, the PS2 was the first of the three surviving systems to get a price cut, being reduced from $300 to $200 in May 2002. Sales went through the roof, with a baseline that never dropped below 400k. That boost lasted through to March '03. In response to the PS2's price cut, MS cut the Xbox's price by the same amount in order to maintain parity the day after Sony announced the PS2's price cut, and the following week Nintendo announced the GameCube would get a price cut from $200 to $150 in order to remain the cheapest system. Despite the PS2's utterly dominant market position, the Xbox and GC still experienced boosts of their own following those price cuts.

Last generation the 360 dominated the PS3 in the U.S. Yet despite coming in a distant third, price cuts did more to boost the PS3's sales than they did the 360's. Each of the 360's pre-slim price cuts in the U.S., which all came in late summer, had the effects of boosting sales during the fall and winter before sales collapsed back the previous baseline in Q2 & early-to-mid Q3. This effectively resulted in the 360 being up about 18.5% in 2007 over 2006, and then sales remained flat in 2008 and 2009. Meanwhile, the PS3's reduction from $500 to $400 gave it a good boost in sales lasting from Nov. 2007 to March 2009 and resulting in PS3 sales being up 38.3% YoY in 2008. Sales dropped a lot in Q2 '09, but grew again after the Slim was launched in Sept. '09. The Slim was responsible for sales being up 22.3% YoY in 2009. Yearly sales remained flat in 2010 and were up slightly in 2011.

So, why would the dominant system experience essentially no growth for several years while its primary competitor, which was running a distant second, experience strong growth in the same period of time? Why were the 360's price cuts proportionally so weak in their effect as compared to those for the PS3? Something was putting a cap on the 360's sales, and that cap wasn't removed until the 360S was released. It could have been the same situation with the OXbox, meaning Xbox systems need to get pretty cheap to sell well. Additionally, the 360S was a change in form factor that did away with the RRoD issue once and for all, so hardware issues may have had an effect as well. But regardless of the specifics, both the OXbox and the 360 had delayed peaks compared to the competition. There's something unique to the brand that keeps it from experiencing significant early-life growth like PS or Nintendo consoles do.

The "console war" is not a zero-sum game, where one system's success or one system getting a boost in sales from a price cut has to come at the detriment of the competition. We know Xbox systems have issues with slow growth, not experiencing significant YoY sales increases until reaching a certain price point (and in the 360's case, a change in form factor as well). There is absolutely no reason to think the XBO has already reached or passed its peak. While it will never surpass the PS4, and will probably fail to win more than two or three more months in the U.S. for the remainder of the generation proper, I think a price cut/slimline model combo will stimulate sales. It's a claim backed by historical evidence. Meanwhile, you are claiming a new precendent by insinuating that the XBO is at or past its peak and that it's all downhill from here. The problem with claiming a new precedent will be set, especially when it runs contrary to historical trends, is that it's based on pure conjecture, not any kind of existing data.

The console market exhibits obvious patterns and trends that we can use to deduce possible future trends. Based on the performance of its predecessors, the most reasonable assumption is that the XBO experiences non-trivial growth, likely leading to peak sales, upon the release of a cheap slim model. If MS releases a slim model and yet sales don't experience any significant growth, then I'll be willing to eat my words, but there is absolutely no reason to think that future measures, be it a permanent price cut to $300 or less or a slim model, will have little to no effect on sales.

Fair point, but there was the pricecut to 400 then 350, the "no Kinect" pack, the major releases, and yet nothing happened, so a lot of people are thinking the opposite: they don't see a reason why another pricecut or a smaller XBO would cause a signifant growth.

 

I guess at this point it's kinda "wait & see"