Why doesn't Xbox sell as well as Switch or Playstation in Europe?

[The_Liquid_Laser]

Every country has products which it makes exceptionally well.  For example, the French are known for making good wine, while Germans are known for making good beer.  Even though I've never been to either country, I'd bet wine is a more popular drink in France while beer is a more popular drink in Germany.  I mean, why wouldn't it be this way?  If this is what that country does well then why wouldn't its own citizens enjoy the benefits? 

Furthermore, in the US when people want imported wine, they like French wine, while if they want imported beer, then they want German beer.  We don't import French beer or German wine.  We want to import the good stuff.  However, the US is such a large ecomony that we can, for example, make our own beer and lots of people buy it.  There are reasons why American companies can do this.  The two most obvious are that 1) domestic beer can be easily sold at a better price and 2) American companies are especially good at marketing to American people.  (Also German companies are best at market to Germans, French companies are best at marketing to the French, etc....)  So Americans might drink American beer or imported German beer (or beer from some other country that makes good beer).  But in Germany, they don't want American beer.  German beer is actually higher quality beer, but American companies get a "home turf advantage" in their own country, so both American and German beer can sell well there.

There are products that the US actually makes that are the best in the world.  A good example is movies.  France is especially disgusted by American culture, but 9 out of the top 10 highest grossing films in France for 2019 were American made.  It's because the US is where the best movies are made.  Because China has a large economy it also makes it's own films.  In China, both Chinese made films and American made films do well, and there are plenty of films from both countries that do well int the Chinese box office.  But in most other countries American movies dominate the box office.  American movies are actually higher quality movies, but in China the Chinese made movies also do well because of a "home turf advantage".  Chinese film makers understand the Chinese culture the best even if their movies are not as well crafted as American movies.

So, what does this say about video games.  In the US, XBox systems sell well and so do the Japanese systems from Sony and Nintendo.  In Japan, XBox sells abysmally.  This is because XBox is actually a lower quality product: both in hardware and software.  The Japanese only like Japanese hardware and software, because these are higher quality products.  In the US, XBox gets the home turf advantage and can sell well.  In other countries, like in Europe, it may not be as obvious because games can be made from a variety of cultures.  But Europeans are culturally neutral toward Japan and the US, so they just want the higher quality hardware.  That is not the XBox.  They also want games that are more appealing to European culture, like FIFA, and you tend to see more of these games on Playstation than on Nintendo systems.  The result is that you see Europe, as a whole, tends to prefer Playstation the most, but Nintendo is seen as high quality too, and XBox is seen as an inferior product.

So, I know I said a lot here.  But basically it comes down to quality and culture.  Every country wants high quality products, but they also tend to be biased toward products from their own culture as well.  So a higher quality product and a lower quality product can both be successful in the same country if the lower quality product is domestically made.  In other countries, they will prefer to import the higher quality product.  And for video games XBox tends to do well in the US or maybe other English speaking cultures.  Culturally, XBox has a "home turf advantage" in English speaking countries.  Everywhere else it is simply seen as an inferior product.