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thismeintiel on 07 July 2018
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Pemalite said:
S.Peelman said:

A consolemaker only screws up every three generations, so Microsoft is doomed no matter what they do; Sony isn’t going to make any mistakes.

On the plus-side that means Microsoft themselves isn’t going to make mistakes either. It’ll be smooth sailing with both having decent sales and boring all-around next gen.

Sony doesn't need to make a mistake per-say to end up derided by the public, they just need to offer a console that isn't as "good" as the competition.

The power gap would have to be pretty big for that to happen. I highly doubt Sony will let that happen.

VAMatt said: 
Assuming that they launch with a single new device, I expect that the next Xbox will either:

1) Launch a year ahead of PS5, with about the expected stats of that PS. 

or

2) Launch at roughly the same time as PS5, at the same price, with noticeably better stats. 

In each case, of course, MS cannot control how Sony will respond. If they launch a year before PS, it is very likely that Sony will bump the stats of PS5 up a bit, so as to have the more powerful machine again. If they launch at the same time, Sony could of course race them to the top in terms of stats. But, to the extent that MS can control the situation, I think it will go one of those two ways. 

The reality is that MS must regain market share. If they cannot do so in the next several years, I expect that they will get out of the console business. To do so, they'll need to have something that Sony does not. Of course, they could do it by under-pricing Sony. This is actually one way where MS can pretty easily win. If they really want to, they can certainly afford to take more of a loss on console sales. But, it doesn't look to me like that's the route they want to take, as they're currently pushing max power. So, I figure they will either try to get time or power on their side. 

With all of that said, and considering that they have alluded to having multiple devices in the family, they very well could launch at both the high and low end at the same time. That would be interesting, and I have no way to even guess as to how that will work out for them.

Both of those are going to be tough for MS to do. First of all, Sony will have the advantage of component pricing. The lowest one of their consoles has sold is 85M+ and they'll be coming off of another 100M+ console, both they can use as leverage for better pricing. 

MS will have to pay more, given the fact that their next console may only match the XBO, possibly just the OG Xbox. And while people think MS has unlimited funds, so they could buy next gen, two things need to be remembered. 1) MS ≠ Xbox. Which was proven this gen by MS lowering funds to Xbox after it failed to match the 360. 2) MS has investors it has to answer to. They can't just pump billions into Xbox to subsidize a console, just to win a console war, without pissing them off.