Will the XBOX One outsell the SNES?

[Mr Puggsly]

thismeintiel said:

derpysquirtle64 said:
100% it will. It's hard to imagine what should happen at this point to Xbox One that it won't reach 50m mark. I think the more interesting question is will it outsell NES? Which really depends on how Microsoft will handle next-gen. Will they make One X as an entry option for next-gen by reducing it's price and making the newer console a high-end option?

No way MS does that. They don't have the pull to force devs to continue to develop on the outdated HW for next gen. Even if they forced the issue by saying they must do it or they can't publish on the XB2, many devs would just refuse.

As for the NES, I doubt XBO goes much past 55M, let alone 60M.

Mr Puggsly said: 

Even if X1 sales decline with anticipation of the next gen, it shouldn't be far from 50 million when that begins happening. So even with a sales decline it should make it to 50 million.

If Xbox sales decline because of sharing gaming with PC, then I guess that would mean Xbox games are doing very well on PC? If the next Xbox sells less, it would likely be for other reasons.

I agree that it definitely looks certain to hit 50M. At least on VGC, since we have no official numbers.

The XB2 would sell less because it will be redundant out of the gate. All of its games may be payable on PC, meaning that it wouldn't have a unique personality, like the PS5 and Switch. And if this gen is anything to go on, MS doesn't mind being more expensive out of the gate, which also will not help them. Even if they have a slight power advantage over PS5. 

You're making the assumption that 3rd parties won't want to support base X1 or X1X when we don't know what the plans are quite yet. For example, maybe the 9th gen Xbox is essentially just a big specs upgrade and can share software easily with the X1. Kinda like a Windows game, tweaking graphics settings for the hardware. That's certainly what MS should aim for.

Also, for a few years developers tend to support previous gen hardware. Many of the smaller and visually simplistic games should work fine on base X1 specs for the entire gen 9th gen. I mean look at much of stuff on the PlayStation and Xbox store, much of those games could have ran on 7th gen specs.

Xbox games being playable on PC doesn't make them less unique, it just means you have more ways to play them. Would Horizon, God of War and Spider-Man be less great if they were on PC? No, more people would just play them. Some of the best selling PS4 games aren't even exclusive.

I think MS having the most powerful console on market is an edge worth having, especially if the X1X functions as a viable low cost option for 9th gen games. However, its worth noting the X1X's power advantage over the PS4 Pro is more than "slight" between the GPU, CPU, and RAM advantages. All that combined means it could handle 9th gen games much better than the PS4 Pro.