Now this was the holiday season were Microsoft had their chance. If they pulled the right third party deals, and got some great bundle's, the sales would've come like money from a printing press! Instead, I felt Microsoft ruined ALL their chances, and completely went for a profit driven strategy, which failed once Sony did their temp price cut to 299 in December. Sony played all the right cards, and Microsoft playing all the wrong ones. Let me get into detail.

1. Not pushing Halo

This was I thought a golden opportunity. They could get a 500GB or  1TB bundle and price it for 299 or 349 with halo, add some box art, and it would SELL SELL SELL! Instead, their opted for a 499 "limited" edition bundle, which sold crap. It barely pulled them through October, and it did nothing for November and December. Halo 5 may well barely do more than 1/2 of what Halo 4 did in its first year (including digital), and a bundle with the game could've certainly helped sales as well. But the game also barely had any marketing after release, so I'm sure that's not the only reason it didn't do well...

2. No third party deals

Microsoft let sony get BOTH COD and Battlefront, a year when the star wars movie was coming. I don't know what the fuck Microsoft was thinking, but it was a very bad idea to let both of these go. Sony gets its logo everytime these two games are advertised (which is alot), while Microsoft thought Fallout 4 would do "enough", instead its barely marketed now (even though its sold very well), and the Xbox gets even less attention from the general gaming audience. Now I want to note I hate third parties, and frankly don't care for them. But in a sales perspective, Microsoft had everything to lose by not focusing on acquiring a good amount of third parties.

3. Totally crappy out on bundle's

Now this does have a bit of a connection to point 1 with Halo, but they also essentially had no decent bundle's. They had the gears bundle, and that was pretty much 85% of the sales of XB1's. The "Tomb Raider" bundle, the 3 games bundle, the fallout bundle, all of them didn't do nearly as well. Microsoft thought that "1TB" would seem reasonable enough to pay 50$ more, well it hurt them hard. They didn't sell enough to provide a decent bump, and Microsoft also flooded the market with way too many of them. Sigh*

4. Rise of the Tomb Raider Flop

How the hell could Microsoft allow this to go against Fallout 4? Not only that, but they didn't bother to market it! They let it sit and die! Their bundle also did next to nothing, but I can say the same for the other 4-5 "nothing" bundle's as well. And even after that, they keep marketing Fallout 4! Wow, this is just mindblowing how so many things can go wrong.

5. No price cut

This is probably the biggest reason Microsoft wasn't able to win. They decided to go into the holidays with no 3rd parties (except Fallout 4), they decided to make their bundle's more expensive then they should've been, and they didn't bother marketing their exclusives. But they also decided to keep the price at 349. They should've known that Sony was about to cut the price, and they should've reacted. Well when Sony cut it to 299 in December, Microsoft had their pants caught. They had to quickly react, and they ended up with a month of sales with console's selling at a lose. So at the ending, their "profit" motive also fell through, and sony was able to bump the price back up in the 2nd 1/2 of the month in time for star wars.

These are all 5 big points, and they were all disaster's. I could probably list a couple more, but it just hurts so much to post this many points. I'm sure Phil Spencer is doing his best, and I love how he focuses on first parties. But if he can't maintain confidence and sales within the brand, sooner or later, he's going to go!

Anyway what do you guys think? Did Microsoft have a good strategy going in, and that Sony just played better, or was Microsoft totally unprepared?

The Xb1 was so cheap here, i had to restrain myself from bying it since it had no games i wanted that wasn't already on Pc. Luckily i messed up the payment with typing in the wrong code. Microsoft did their best with what they had, Sony just have a bigger reputation and people are aware of 2016

It was not a bad strategy, but it definitely could have been better imo.

All thinks considered they did pretty good.

I don't know if those things would have been more profitable for Microsoft. The only thing that was an obvious mistake is RotTR having to compete against Fallout 4. Why even bother with the timed exclusivity if they were going to send this game to fight against one of the biggest titles of the year?

Also, I think Halo doesn't have the punch it one has, and it has received mixed opinions because of the campaign and the micro transacctions.

i think the only mistake they really did was not having a halo bundle for 350$. for the same price you could have gotten a PS4 with Starwars, a new and current gen release. the 350$ bundle for the XB1 was gears, a remaster.

a 350$ dollar halo bundle, would have been a very strong seller. IMO the Fallout and Tomb Raider bundles should have been 350$, but one would understand they would want to focus on profitability more this holiday, and not wanting to give a 3rd party game with a 350 bundle.

regardless, they did 1.2 million in November in the USA, and were up in the UK during black friday. from the data we know, XB1 did pretty good this holiday. it wont compete with the PS4 on a worldwide level, but its performance in the markets that XB1 has a presence in, it did pretty well.

Yes, 1.2 million is not bad. But PS4 doubled its sales this year in the US compared to last november, while the XB1 was up like 1-2% this month. Its a big lose, especially how Xbox use to dominate NA.

thats because sony actually gave a fuck this year. last year they did no price promotion during blackfriday. just bundling TLoU and GTA for 400$.

this year they had a price cut in Octobor, had three bundles collect pre-orders for 2-3 months (the starwars bundle, the limited edition CoD bundle and LE Starwars bundle). they had more bundles (already mentioned) along with the nathan drake bundle. and they had marketing rights for CoD, Assassins Creed and Starwars battlefront, and then they dropped the price of the PS4 another 50$ to 299$ during blackfriday, shortly after cutting the price of the PS4 just one month earlier. 

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Well they need to give the XB1 five years. Any shorter, and they seem like they almost want to ditch out, and that'll hurt them. I'd say 2018 would be a good time, though by then, Sony may well be on their way into making a console.