Xbox One X will launch for $499

[binary solo]

Hiku said:

binary solo said:
Sensible in the longterm perspective. Profitability of the Xbox is more important than number of units sold and it's clear XOS will be an important unit for entry-level buyers for a few years yet. They possibly looked at PS4 vs PS4P sales and realised that the premium unit is not going to supersede the base unit in sales volume, so there is no point trying to take a volume approach to XOX at the cost of profitability.

Yeah, either they looked at Sony or came to that conlusion themselves, because Sony seemed to reach that conclusion without any prior reference, and they were correct. Pro is selling just slightly better than they expected. Although MS are aiming at a slightly more hardcore audience than Sony perhaps. But I still think the audience is very limited.

People will say that XBOX is DOA, but if it meets MS's sales expectations, even if they are as low as Sony's expectations of the Pro, it will do what it was designed to do.
But at $499 there's a question if even 1 out of 5 Xbox units sold will be an Xbox X. Or whatever MS are expecting.

The MS guys are smart enough to have come to that conclusion even before PS4P went on sale. But their conclusion has been well validated by PS4Ps share of over all PS4 sales. So I think they are probably more confident in their price point becaus of Sony's experience with PS4P, despite some disappointed Xbox fans who thought XOX could actually get Xbox to start winning the sales war. But to me it seems like MS taking a more mature approach to its position in console hardware and hopefully not engaging in the immature sales war.

As a business that is not the slightest bit reliant on Xbox hardware for profits, there is absolutely nothing wrong with being the number 2 console, even by a wide margin. So long as sales reach a level that helps MS's overall strategic objectives it doesn't really matter where they land in unit sales compared to PS and Nintendo. Sony and Nintendo on the other hand are far more reliant on console hardware install base for profitability. Nintendo is wholly reliant. So those companies need a higher critical mass of sales to meet strategic objectives than MS does. MS should see this lower KPI as a strength and realise that the effort needed to get the marginal benefit of selling 60 million consoles in a genetation compared to selling 40 million is really rather wasted.