| Shadow1980 said: The thread title suggests the XBO is dying, and furthermore it tries to compare a console brand that historically does most of its business in America and the UK with a handheld that is strong in most of the world and especially in Japan. In regards to the second point I think a better comparison would be the XBO to the 360, for obvious reasons. In regards to the first point, there is no evidence to suggest that the XBO is "dying" or otherwise past its peak (except in Japan, where it's significantly down from last year, which was itself awful). Let's take a look at the XBO's performance in the U.S. compared to that of the 360:
As we can see, the XBO is doing fine compared to the 360 so far. The key words there being "so far." It had a much better launch than the 360 did, plus its sales for the whole year in 2014 and 2015 were about 12% and 7% bigger respectively than the 360's performances in 2006 and 2007. However, there are some caveats here. You probably noticed that a huge part of the XBO's lead comes from the holidays, whereas outside the holidays the XBO has been doing not quite as well as the 360. For the Jan.-Oct. period of 2014, the XBO sold over 19% fewer units than the 360 did in the same period in 2006. For Jan.-Oct. 2015 it sold almost 13% fewer units than the 360 did in Jan.-Oct. 2007 period; the 360's did have the advantage of Halo 3, though, which was a massive system-seller, and for the Jan.-Aug. period the XBO sold only 1% fewer units than the 360 did in the same period in '07. Finally, through the first half of this year the XBO has sold 17% fewer units than the 360 did. Deep price cuts during the holidays have proven critical in maintaining the XBO's lead over the 360. The XBO S being released next month will almost certain provide a massive boost for the XBO. The second half of this year should prove to be better than the second half of 2008 did for the 360, and 2017 as a whole will almost certainly be bigger than 2016, which will make it sell better than the 360 did in 2009. But beyond that? Well, the XBO is getting its slim model exactly two years before the 360 got its. This is going to cause the XBO to peak sooner than the 360 did. Furthermore, the XBO, regardless of how its sales during the year have been distributed so far, is nevertheless already more front-loaded than the 360, and the XBO S coming out two years before the 360 S will make it even more front-loaded. We have to remember how back-loaded the 360 was. It did not peak until 2011. Here's what the XBO has to look forward to in the future:
What's going to happen is come August 2018 the XBO's sales curve will likely be cresting if not already past its peak and it'll be running into the same point in the 360's life when the 360 S was released (that big uptick we see in the middle of the year in the middle of the chart). At that point, whatever increase in the XBO-360 gap in the XBO's favor will start to reverse. By how much, though? Will the gap close and the 360 reassert its lead in aligned LTD sales? I think it will. Given how no two systems ever maintain geometrically similar sales curves, there's simply no reason to think the XBO will maintain its lead over the 360 in the long run. So far the 360 has sold about 43 million units in the U.S., making it the second-best selling console in U.S. history. It got to that level by simply trouncing the PS3. The PS3 has sold only around 26.7M units. That puts combined 360+PS3 sales at about 69.7M. That ought to give us a good estimate of the overall market size for conventional consoles in the U.S. Given how it is performing relative to the PS4's sales, we should probably assume that eventually the XBO will stop tracking ahead of the 360 and fall behind. If we assumed that the XBO continued tracking ahead of the 360, that would come with the further assumption that the XBO could surpass the PS2, and given how the PS4 has been the leading console this generation, that could potentially mean the PS4 could sell 50M or more in the U.S. We'd be talking about 90+ million units between the two. Considering the U.S. is about 40% of the global combined PS+Xbox market, that would entail a global tally somewhere on the order of 225 million units, some 48 million more than the global 360+PS3 total. We're obviously not going to see anything like that. A reasonable assumption is that the PS4 & XBO sell between 65-75 million units combined in the U.S., plus or minus several million. Based on current market share trends this generation, I'm projecting 32.5M for the XBO and 37.5M for the PS4 in the U.S., plus or minus 2M for both. Based on the U.S.'s share of both systems', for global lifetime sales I'm projecting 50-60M for the XBO and 100-115M for the PS4. TL;DR, the XBO isn't dying. It's doing quite well for now. However, it almost certainly will not sell anywhere close to what the 360 did, either globally or in the U.S. |
I think with the one S we will see Xbox catch up globally in the US. Its going to sell really well.
