Aura7541 on 10 February 2015
| Shadow1980 said: Back to the OP's argument. The U.S. is a notoriously mercenary market, with no consistent brand preference. We chose the NES over the Master System. The SNES and Genesis jockeyed back and forth for several years, with the Genesis winning in yearly sales in 1991, 1993, and 1994 and the SNES winning 1992, and 1995-98. Americans largely ignored the PS1 at first, with the system selling roughly at Wii U levels until its first price cut, after which it improved to around GameCube levels. The N64 was actually outselling the PS1 in monthly sales for almost a year, but when FFVII came out the PS1 rebounded in a huge way and the system eventually dominated the U.S. market. The PS2 utterly dominated everything that stood in its path in the sixth generation, and it even outsold the 360 in 2006. The Wii was the top system from 2007 through 2010, while the 360 was the top system from 2011-13; the 360 even recently just edged out the Wii to become the #1 seventh-gen system in the U.S. Now we see the PS4 winning in LTD sales as well as winning every month except for Dec. '13 and this past Nov. & Dec. Long point short, American gamers just want whatever gives them the biggest bang for their buck. Even at parity more Americans saw the PS4 as the overall better deal, as evidenced by NPD data from June through October of last year. The XBO did win this past holiday by undercutting the PS4 in price by $50, but if rankings from Amazon and other online retail sites are any indication, even with a lower price the XBO may not win outside the holidays (we'll find out for sure in two days when NPD results come in). Sure, the PS4 may have a lead of "only" 522k in the U.S. as of the end of 2014, but the only way the XBO can win is if it consistently outsells the PS4 every month. It has to do this not only to close the gap and gain the lead, but also to maintain the lead. The PS4 won the first ten months of 2014 and expanded its lead every month. If it continues to do this in 2015 even at a higher price, then that's a sure sign that the XBO will never win. The XBO cannot win in LTD sales if it can only win in November and December. It's also worth pointing out that Sony hasn't even issued the first price cut for the PS4 yet and given historical precedent will almost certainly do so some time this year. The XBO absolutely cannot win at parity, and it may have trouble doing so even at a lower price. If the PS4 drops to $350, it would force MS to drop the XBO to $300 during the holidays to have a chance to win just then. If the PS4 drops to $300, then that may be all she wrote for the XBO's chances in the U.S. I doubt MS will drop the XBO to $250 this year. They may drop it to $300 permanently this holiday just to maintain parity, but $250 may cause incurred losses to be higher than they're willing to take just to win for two months out of the year. The only surefire way for the XBO to win in the U.S. is to undercut the PS4 in price by $100, and I don't think MS will do that. I already have my doubts about the continued existence of the Xbox brand, and if the XBO loses too much money then MS may have no choice but to "pull a Sega" and go third-party. These are precarious times for the Xbox brand, and winning in a single market (because continental Europe and especially Japan are lost causes) probably isn't worth losing considerable sums of money on. It'd be better for the XBO to sell 40 million lifetime and make a little bit of money than to sell 50 million and be a huge money sink. |
Bravo, good sir. That was absolutely beautiful.
