2017 was solid year for Xbox One sales in spite of exclusvies.

[DonFerrari]

Mr Puggsly said:

DonFerrari said:

Last I heard of Fable was Lionhead being cancelled... there have been announcement about Fable, rumors or just your expectation?

Lionhead was shut down, Fable Legends (a mediocre online game) was cancelled.

Fable is still popular, the question is who's gonna continue it? Thus far its just rumors but its silly to think the IP is dead.

Even X1 remasters of the trilogy would be nice just to have the visuals cleaned up for modern consoles. They do well on PC as well given there is a RPG following there.

I see. Yes Fable is a liked IP... so since it is just some rumor, let's pray it is a Fable 4

DialgaMarine said:
I think people are knocking it’s numbers because 1) the X launched, and you would think new super powered hardware would give it a much bigger boost, and 2) a lot of the hardcore Xbox fans have been claiming power is the main driving force behind console sales, claiming it’s the main reason why PS4 has done so well. Yet, here we are with both the base PS4 and significantly weaker Nintendo Switch dominating the sales charts. I guess it’s more of an “I told you so” scenario, since said hardcore Xbox fans were claiming things would automatically turn around once X was out.

Very few users claimed X1X would turn around anything, the most even the hardcore fans said is that X1X would outsell PS4Pro.

NawaiNey said:
VGC overtracks XB1 by quite a bit.
When EA accidentally revealed the actual figures last time by stating that PS4+XB1 have sold 79 million units:
https://www.gamebreakingnews.net/2017/05/ps4-and-xbox-one-combined-will-reach-105-million-units-sold-in-2017-according-to-electronic-arts/
At the same time Sony had revealed that PS4 had sold through 53.4 million units: https://www.forbes.com/sites/olliebarder/2017/01/05/the-ps4-has-now-sold-53-4-million-units-worldwide-with-6-2-million-sales-over-the-2016-holidays/#756123e7b415

Meaning XB1 at the end of 2016 had sold 79-53.4=25.6 million units. At the end of 2016 VGC has XB1 at 27.9 million!
So even if VGC tracked XB1 properly this year it's still over tracked by 2.3 million, but most likely it's over by a good 3-4 million over tracked.

Send this on PM to Talon for he to work out the database.

Mr Puggsly said:

RoboTin said:  

They really need to take time on Halo 6 and release it 2019 to beef it up and make it as good as they can. 

Halo 5 has better visuals than it gets credit for, I think the art direction was more of the problem and the effects were too ambitious for the hardware.

I mean Halo 5's lighting and performance is ahead of basically any other FPS on the console, at least more ambitious than the average 60 fps game. Doom and Battlefield 1 kinda look bland in some areas compared to Halo 5, but all of these games strengths and weaknesses in various places. Halo 5 being the only game that actually maintains 60 fps.

I think they could have made good on Halo 5's lacking campaign by simply making another ODST or Reach esque campaign using that engine. Because the gameplay in Halo 5 feels great, the campaign just left people wanting more. Never happened though, wasted potential.

How much being 30fps would impact its campaign mode? Perhaps that would improve IQ.

LudicrousSpeed said:
There’s a PlayStation Phone?

Nope, I don't think so. It is more like one user want a complete line of playstation with console, hybrid, HH, cellphone just haven't seem he asking for a notebook and desktop.

I guess he is saying that if X1 sales can be considered a success why a Playstation Phone can't be made.

pokoko said:
"Xbox" would make an incredible documentary one day.

Despite the enormous errors made with the Xbox One, the groundbreaking stuff Microsoft did with the 360 ensured that many of the more casual gamers would stick around. They were truly the first to make sure customers were invested in their ecosystem and it paid off then and down the road. It's still all that gets talked about at work and I've been told several times that I should get an Xbox One so I can play CoD or Battlefront with the rest of the staff.

The same could be said that since this is important now it will be harder on next gen for MS to recover territory.

Mr Puggsly said:

UltimateGamer1982 said:
Here’s my personal problem with the X1. To me so far, the console still doesn’t have that one stand out exclusive ppl will remember the console for in the years to follow. Everyone knows ps2 for several, ps1 for FF7, n64 for Mario 64, 360 for halo 3, Dreamcast for soul calibur, OG Xbox had halo and ninja gaiden etc. For the most part the One relies mostly on third parties as opposed to exclusives.

My favorite X1 game is probably still Forza 5 as it was my first X1 game and it looked amazing at launch. But you get my point right? So far I still don’t think X1 has that ONE game yet.

I think its incredibly difficult to make games that feel like ground breaking experiences because so much has been done already.

I don't think any modern games right now have the "wow factor" as the titles you've mentioned. That's probably because we've also become jaded and creating ground breaking experiences is difficult at this point.

Although, I do credit Sony for raising the bar on cinematic experiences in gaming. But from a gameplay perspective, I don't find their games particularly fresh either.

 

At launch I felt like Dead Rising 3 was the most impressive launch title because the assets, lighting, and other effects were very high quality for an open world game compared to what we had seen before. On top of that, there were many zombies in the city. It was dragged down by frame rate issues, 720p, poor AA, and pop in but it still felt like something well beyond last gen. Fun game as well, looks fantastic on PC and could benefit greatly from an X1X patch.

Forza 5 is an impressive looking game, still looks good thanks to high quality assets, visual polish and 60 fps. But it didn't feel like a far cry from Forza 4. I did play a lot of Forza 5 though because there wasn't much to play at launch and I had a lot of free time.

I don't think he is talking about being groundbreaking, but more on the memorable.

Like in 20 years what game will people be nostalgic about on X1? If there is almost no exclusives the pool will be small, and those exclusives weren't really stellar.

Normchacho said:

Mr Puggsly said:

Stable sales are not a worst case scenario. Especially when its a pretty strong number. With stable sales it could surpass SNES and NES.

Look at it this way, Wii U was a disaster because its best year was 5 million, the launch year. While every year after was 3 - 3.5 million until it dropped like a rock in 2016.

So I do believe steady numbers would be a good position. If they wanna go up, its gonna take to some big software to accomplish that I suppose. At least the X1's price is already in a good place, I mean $199 with games is pretty amazing for its capabilities.

Oh of course not. Stable sales are far from the worst case scenario. But it looks to me like they might be running out of ways to bolster sales, which means if they start to slip they won't have a way to pull out of it. I'm of the belief that if a system wants to sell well consistently then they need to keep giving people new reasons to buy it. The same things that bolstered sales in 2017 aren't going to be as effective in 2018.

I'd argue that outside of exclusives, MS has done way more to make the One appealing than the PS4 over the last two years. BC, The One S and X being bigger upgrades than the Slim and Pro, pushing for cross platform play, frequent deals, gamepass and EA access, ect. Not many huge things on their own (except for the One S and the deals, I'd argue) but they add up to quite a bit, And yet this year the Xbox One will likely be up 5 or 6% from last year, while the PS4 will be up around 20% from last year. They've had to try really hard to keep sales stable, and I think they're running out of cards to play to keep sales stable.

I think there's a good chance that 2017 will be the Xbox One's best year, and I don't know if we'll see another year where the Xbox One sells better in one year than it did the year before. Unless they stop following traditional generations of course.

If you can make your 4th year keep the same sales as the 3rd then it is already quite good.