Shadow1980 said:
As of April NPD, the PS4 is 497,000 units in the lead LTD and 300k in the lead YTD. That is not an insignificant gap, and that gap will obviously widen come May NPD, perhaps by well over another 100k units, putting the YTD gap at around 600k. The XBO would have to have an absolutely massive rebound to close that 600k gap "soon." And if we assume "soon" to mean "by year's end," if the PS4 averages at least 250k per month from June through October, that means the XBO would have to nearly triple its April figures every month just to erase the YTD gap by time November rolls around, and would have to outsell the PS4 by at least another 300k in the Nov.+Dec. period. Even if the PS4 only averages 200k per month for the remaining non-holiday months. The XBO would still have to have more than double (specifically a 117% increase, appropriate considering Halo's importance to Xbox) its sales to erase the YTD gap. But I have serious doubts that the Kinect-less XBO will boost sales that much for reasons: 1) it's nowhere near as good of a deal as the Titanfall bundle (which itself failed to outsell the PS4), 2) it's technically not even a price cut, and 3) most importantly, comparable price cuts early in other system's lives rarely result in such large and permanent boosts in baseline sales. They sometimes give the appearance of such boosts, but that's usually due to the price cut occurring in approximate conjunction with some other factor, usually major software releases or tax season. Once such confounding factors go away, we often still see solid boosts, but nothing exceeding a two-fold increase in average sales. Perhaps the biggest increases we ever saw in the U.S. last generation due to price cuts was the release of the PS3 Slim in 2009, which resulted in some months immediately following the release of said SKU having over double or even triple the sales of the months prior to its release, but it was hardly anything consistent. It gave the PS3 a large enough boost to soundly beat the 360 in September and gave it a very strong holiday quarter, beating the 360 in October and December. Here's how it sold in quarterly terms in 2008 through 2010:
(Note: Q2 2008 saw the release of MGS4, which pushed the PS3 to 405k units in June, half the sales of that quarter.)
As we see, the PS3 Slim did help baseline sales a good bit in 2010 in addition to giving it a strong holiday quarter in 2009, but the baseline sales when averaged out over time were hardly the double the XBO would need at minimum to start closing the gap between itself and the PS4. Overall, the PS3 sold 42% more units in the first half of 2010 than in the first half of 2009, and in the second half of 2010 it was actually down from the same period in 2009, enough to where it was barely up overall for the year (the release of the 360 Slim probably had a lot to do with that). So, the Kinect-less SKU will likely provide a solid boost to sales, and in June it may even beat the PS4 for the first time this year, but I don't think it will provide anything so strong and permanent to even do as much as keep it above 200k per month from July through October. Given historical precedent, the best we should hope for is an average of 150-175k per month at most. This will reduce the rate the PS4/XBO gap increases, but will obviously not reverse the trend.
Overcoming the momentum of another better-selling system in the same generation is not an easy thing to accomplish. The PS3, despite having more rapid growth in its first several years than the 360, still couldn't ever close the gap between the two, and in 2010 the PS3's fate of coming in last in the U.S. for the generation was sealed. But with the right games and right pricing it's not impossible to become the new sales leader later in the generation. We saw the PS1 finally overtaking the N64 in the U.S. when FFVII was released, even though the PS1 had been languishing with mediocre sales for two years and the N64 was outselling it for a year straight since its release in August 1996. Also, the 360 has ultimately outsold the Wii in the U.S. due to better software support giving it stronger legs, a newer Red-Ring-free SKU at a good price making it even more attractive, and the waning sales of the Wii providing an opening as customers who had their Wii fix decided to supplement things with a more conventional gaming machine. However, the PS1 and N64 were very different systems, as were the 360 and Wii. Right now the PS4 and XBO share some 90% of the same library. In fact, exclusives are now the sole difference between the two systems (or at least the only difference that matters for most consumers). Thus, it's incumbent on MS to convince gamers that their selection of exclusives is just so damn awesome that they absolutely must have an XBO. That'll be tough to pull off, and given MS's track record they may even fail at this crucial task, but it's still possible. But the longer they wait the tougher it will be to overcome the PS4's momentum. It's not quite a runaway for Sony yet, but it will be before too long unless something changes besides the introduction of the Kinect-less SKU.
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