thismeintiel said:
Well, unless the XBO sales just complete plummet next year, I'm sure they are still keeping it around for a year or two after the Anaconda launches. Will they actually support it past GamerPass/xCloud? We'll have to wait and see. Either way, they aren't going to keep it around for the whole gen, regardless of the generationless BS they spouted about mid-gen. Sony won't either. It will be like any other gen. The old consoles will last 1-3 years on store shelves after their predecessor has launched, then be discontinued. I highly doubt we will see another XBO SKU. Definitely not one with different specs. There would be no point in it and I'm sure MS is fully aware of that. There's also little point in competing with the Pro. That ship has sailed. If they wanted to do that, they would have subsidized the X and launched it at the same $399 price point, as well as pumped out some more high quality games. My guess is that both consoles will be within ~10% of each other performance-wise, while they will only be ~$50 apart from each other, if not the same price. In that situation, it would be a clear PS victory. They already have EU and Japan on lock, when compared to Xbox. NA will most likely stay the same split it is, now, with PS5 being B/C with the PS4. Many of the PS4 gamers will want to stay in the ecosystem they were in this gen, and if the power and price are almost identical, there is no reason to leave. Especially if you want to play more GOW, Horizon, Spider-Man, GT, Infamous, and/or TLoU. |
Good points.
In terms of a lesser TF XB1X basically, it would save on costs instead of dropping X and launching Lockhart in it's place, and it may also come in handy if the Navi RDNA TF looks low on paper in comparison to the X Polaris GCN TF. If X is 6.0TF and Scarlett ends up 8.0TF-10TF, that won't seem like near the upgrade that the X was, even though at a metal level it's a significant leap. By making the 'new' X model closer to Pro's GPU spec, they could better compete on price, and at the same time make Scarlett look like it's twice the performance or more. The X owners who want to upgrade will regardless, but for the semi hardcore and casual audience, why buy Scarlett if it's not that much more powerful than the X, since they won't likely understand the difference between an 8 core Jaguar vs an 8 core Zen 2?
A 1.4TF to 4.8TF to 10TF gap would make a lot more sense than 1.4TF to 6.0TF to 10TF. That's if they don't hit 12TF, because a 1.4TF to 6.0TF to 12TF works just as good really from a marketing perspective, it just makes it tougher to compete with Pro. Maybe the mid range consoles will be discontinued and won't matter, and maybe they stay but sell even less, making it a non issue for the most part.
I would have to guess if both companies try to push the limits of next gen, that they will end up very close because they should both restrict themselves to a $499 price point max. Now if either company is going to do what's necessary to make sure they have the performance crown and have to price the console higher because of it, it would have to be XB. PS will not go above $499, even if PS5 is seen as weaker because of it.