RolStoppable said:
What he says is mostly right because it can be demonstrated how much more price matters. Your counter-argument comes with the problem that the Xbox One had built a very negative perception of itself before its price dropped below the PS4. It's not as simple as "lower price always wins", but price is a more important factor than power. When you compare the sales of the PS4 with the PS4 Pro, the majority of consumers has opted for the standard PS4 since the launch of the Pro despite only a $100 difference. The power gap between the PS4 and Pro is larger than the power gap you would expect between a 2019 Scarlett and 2020 PS5, so the argument that a one year headstart would be beneficial for Microsoft holds water. By the time the PS5 launches, Microsoft could undercut Sony's console price and the market would choose Xbox, provided it isn't inherently biased against Xbox. So the USA and the UK would go to Microsoft, the rest of the world would still pick Sony despite the price difference. This is purely hypothetical though, because Microsoft slept through too much of the PS4 generation, so a 2019 launch wasn't even feasible. You would want games to go along with the launch of a new console, but Microsoft's first party strategy has been ill-advised for too long to prepare properly for the launch of a new console. At best they could put out something like the 360 which stumbles through its first year (360 gained a headstart of only ~5.5m units on the PS3), and then hope that Sony is overconfident in the PS5 to gain more traction. Although it needs to be said that this time around Sony wouldn't need to commit PS3-level blunders, because nowadays it's established that the vast majority of games come to both PS and Xbox whereas at the time of the 360 Sony still held a tremendous advantage in exclusive third party games. |
Explain the Dreamcast, which was $150 cheaper than the PS2 when the latter launched. There's a lot more to it than just price.
Your PS4 Pro example isn't a very good one, either. The PS4 Pro isn't a new competing console, it's within the same family of PS4 consoles. It has a much smaller market to sell to. It has to sell to people willing to pay $399 not just for a console, but an upgraded version of a console they may already have, the OG version still being able to play everything the Pro can at $299 and below. That means people who wait for a consoles to hit $199/$299 before buying have no interest in the Pro until it hits those prices, and by then they may not feel the need to upgrade. Again, poor comparison.
It doesn't really matter if Scarlett can cut price against the PS5. If the PS5 is seen as the better value, because of power, games output and/or brand loyalty, like the PS2 was against the Dreamcast, people will buy the PS5. And yes, it would take Sony making PS3 level blunders for MS to gain traction. That gap between the amount of quality releases on XBO and PS4 has been reestablished this gen. There's a reason a basically $199 ($230 with game/s) XBO is losing to a $299 PS4.
