So the Scorpio....

[Normchacho]

Shadow1980 said:

Normchacho said:

A few things.

First off, Your talk about Microsoft having a larger install base than Sony requires some iffy logic to justify and doesn't have anything to do with Scorpio.

Secondly, the Xbox One isn't outpacing the 360. Total sales are ahead, but it's lead has dropped by half a million consoles in the last 12 months and were coming up to a point where 360 sales were very strong.

Between July and the end of 2008 the 360 sold 7,796,789 units while during the same months last year the Xbox One sold 6,268,479 units. Also keep in mind that the Xbox One has been down YoY.

Third. You haven't give a reason as to why someone who didn't want an Xbox One would want the Scorpio.

I just wanted to interject myself here because sales numbers got brought up, and as with most things sales-related I have a chart for this. Now, the XBO-360 gap might be narrowing globally (at least 400k going by VGC's numbers), but global numbers don't tell us much on their own because of significant regional differences in buying habits. The XBO has not been doing well in continental Europe and especially Japan. Europe and Japan are the sources of that narrowing gap over the past year. However, it has been doing fairly well in the U.S. and UK (and probably also other English-speaking markets).

In the U.S., the gap had generally been growing from November 2014 until this past December.

It narrowed a bit last August and September because the 360 got its first price cut as well as Halo 3, but overall the XBO sold more in 2015 than the 360 did in 2007. Now, it is worth pointing out that the entire reason that the XBO sold more in both 2014 and 2015 than the 360 did in 2006 & 2007, respectively, was due to sales during the holidays. The XBO has had very strong holiday sales in the U.S., and as the chart shows it's the only thing keeping the XBO in the lead.

Going into 2016, the gap has narrowed a bit. In the Jan.-July period the gap shrank from 1900k to 1733k. However, the 360 was still experiencing modest YoY sales growth in 2008 (9% overall for the Jan.-July period) due to the residual effects of the system's first price cut the previous August. Meanwhile, the XBO did not received a permanent price cut between November 2014, when it was reduced to $350, and late May of this year, when it was cut to $300 (and it was cut yet again in June). However, it's obvious that the recent price cuts for the XBO were just to clearance out existing SKUs to make way for the XBO S. And the S model is almost guaranteed to generation strong YoY growth, more than enough for the gap to spread yet again in the XBO's favor, perhaps by as many as one million units more than the current gap.

That being said, I do think the gap will eventually shrink in the 360's favor, and I do not think the XBO will come close to the 360's lifetime total. The XBO should maintain a strong lead throughout next year, but after June 2018 the gap will narrowly shrink, as the XBO will be at the same point in its life as the 360 was when the 360 S came out. The 360 S sent 360 sales through the roof, with substantial YoY growth for the next year and continued strong sales through to Q1 2012. By summer of 2018, the XBO will likely be past its own peak. I think that some time in 2019, the gap will have closed entirely and the 360 will take the lead in aligned LTD sales.

While the Xbox One is doing quite well in the US, it does depend on the US more heavily than the 360 did. On top of that, I suspect that the Xbox One S is going to fail to generate the kind of sales spike previous slim models have caused. The issues I see it running into are that the Xbox One has been so cheap leading up to the launch of the One S that it going back to normal pricing is actually an increase in price instead of the decrease slim models normally see. Plus the One S is going to have to compete this holiday season with at least the PS4 Slim, which itself is likely to see a price cut to either $299 or $249.

Basically what I'm saying is that whereas most slim models are cheaper than the origional model and don't have to launch against any major hardware. The Xbox One S has to launch at a higher price, and against the slim model from a more popular system.

That's even assuming the Neo doesn't launch this year. If it does this is the situation we could be looking at:

PS4 slim 500gb @ $249

Xbox One S 500gb & PS4 slim 1TB @ $299

Xbox One S 1TB @ $349

PS4.5 1 TB @ Xbox One S 2TB @ $399

 

That's puts the One S in a potentially very tricky situation for the end of the year. A situation, that I think will keep it from expanding it's lead over the Xbox 360 in WW, launch aligned sales.