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Forums - Microsoft Discussion - Rumor: Xbox Scarlet Devkit is late behind the schedule to surprise Sony

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What do you think

To surprise Sony 10 20.00%
 
It's late because Sony ar... 9 18.00%
 
It's just showed Microsof... 7 14.00%
 
They probably just rebuil... 5 10.00%
 
Who knows 19 38.00%
 
Total:50

I guess that's the reason we have a very few info regarding Xbox Scarlet.

Tom Warren is a Senior Editor for The Verge. Tom previously founded WinRumors, a site dedicated to Microsoft news, before joining The Verge. Tom also used to work as an enterprise project manager in a variety of investment banks, and has a background in IT and Windows engineering.

So what is the reason why Xbox Scarlet Devkit being late? 



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shikamaru317 said:

There were some other recent rumors from MS leakers that said that MS was sending out tiny batches of non-final dev kits to devs, because MS wants to keep the final specs secret until it is too late for Sony to change their PS5 design. I'm pretty sure that MS wants to hold on to the most powerful console crown that they obtained when XB1 X topped PS4 Pro. I just hope they don't go too overboard on specs, beating Sony on specs is fine, but they need to keep the production cost low enough so that they can afford to match price with PS5, or at least stay close to it. A $100 price difference would be a huge mistake imo.

 Microsoft can eat the cost if they want, they can just make powerful consoles more expensive than Sony and cut the price. It comes to price strategy and how they can recoup the cost. But I believe this rumor nonsense, because both consoles will be identical. 



Wishful thinking. MS has shown that their future lies in streaming. They want a powerful console, but they aren't going to go all to beat Sony by any significant margin. At best, they will be within 10%-15% of each other, with a chance Sony is on top. 40%-50% is something to tout. 10%-15% won't make enough of a difference to the eye. Especially not when Sony's 1st party studios are HW magicians, getting every last drop of power out of their consoles.

More importantly, I doubt MS is going to want to subsidize the Scarlett like Sony will the PS5. The XBO pricing already proves this. They could have launched at $399, w/ Kinect if they wanted to subsidize the HW and take on the PS4. Instead they launched at $499. Same goes for the X. They could have subsidized it and launched at $399, to take on the Pro. Instead, $499, again. We may even see the same $399 vs $499, again, next gen.

It's just the secret sauce all over, again.



thismeintiel said:

Wishful thinking. MS has shown that their future lies in streaming. They want a powerful console, but they aren't going to go all to beat Sony by any significant margin. At best, they will be within 10%-15% of each other, with a chance Sony is on top. 40%-50% is something to tout. 10%-15% won't make enough of a difference to the eye. Especially not when Sony's 1st party studios are HW magicians, getting every last drop of power out of their consoles.

More importantly, I doubt MS is going to want to subsidize the Scarlett like Sony will the PS5. The XBO pricing already proves this. They could have launched at $399, w/ Kinect if they wanted to subsidize the HW and take on the PS4. Instead they launched at $499. Same goes for the X. They could have subsidized it and launched at $399, to take on the Pro. Instead, $499, again. We may even see the same $399 vs $499, again, next gen.

It's just the secret sauce all over, again.

Yeah, agree with u. 



I thought MS wasn't worried about Sony?



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Another reason it will be bad for Xbox team if they purposely late on delivering the final system is , it will affecting the console mass production, sepc target, and games . Xbox One also late on the devkit and had some small changes. Initial Xbox One games are very bad due to software problem.



shikamaru317 said:
thismeintiel said:

Wishful thinking. MS has shown that their future lies in streaming. They want a powerful console, but they aren't going to go all to beat Sony by any significant margin. At best, they will be within 10%-15% of each other, with a chance Sony is on top. 40%-50% is something to tout. 10%-15% won't make enough of a difference to the eye. Especially not when Sony's 1st party studios are HW magicians, getting every last drop of power out of their consoles.

More importantly, I doubt MS is going to want to subsidize the Scarlett like Sony will the PS5. The XBO pricing already proves this. They could have launched at $399, w/ Kinect if they wanted to subsidize the HW and take on the PS4. Instead they launched at $499. Same goes for the X. They could have subsidized it and launched at $399, to take on the Pro. Instead, $499, again. We may even see the same $399 vs $499, again, next gen.

It's just the secret sauce all over, again.

Subsidizing is only truly effective when you do it early gen. It takes alot of extra accessory, subscription, and software sales to recoup what you lose when you subsidize a console. Phil was not head of Xbox early this gen when XB1 released, Don Mattrick was. Mattrick made the decision not to subsidize XB1 on launch, not Phil. By the time Phil was head and XB1 X was getting ready to release, it was too late for subsidizing it to have any significant effect, all it would have done is lose them money on hardware sales in exchange for a small increase in userbase. Phil decided that this gen was basically already a lost cause, and that it would be better to focus on profitability over userbase size for the remainder of the generation.

This does not however mean that Phil will do the same thing with Scarlett that he did with X. A new gen is a chance for a fresh start for Xbox, and since subsidizing is most effective when done at the beginning of a gen, he may very will choose to take the fight to Sony by subsidizing a more powerful system to aim for price parity with PS5.

Now do I think that we will see a 50% more powerful console? Not a chance. Maybe 20% more powerful for the same price as PS5 would be my expectation if that is Phil's plan. 

Phil took over in 2014.  At that point, he could have convinced MS to subsidize the XBO to $299.  The X also released in 2017.  That was all his baby.  He definitely could have had MS subsidize it.  The problem?  MS, not Phil Spencer, makes that call.  And they are not in the game of subsidizing their HW significantly.  They have made that obvious.  Hell, after the XBO's lackluster results, there was talk of spinning off that division to let it suffer its own fate.  Even Bill Gates said he would be fine with that.  That should show you they are not in the game to take losses on HW. 

They are fine with buying new studios and taking a hit on Gears 5 in order to push GamePass and xCloud, because that is where they see their future.  Not subsidizing HW in order to sell more than Sony.  In the end, Xbox HW is not a big concern for MS.  On the other hand, PS HW is very important to Sony.  And considering Sony has already said they want to have consumers move over as quickly as possible to the PS5, expect them to bring their A game on power, games, and price.



There is no chance that XB will launch at a higher price than Sony unless it is much more powerful. More realistically, MS will try to edge out PS in overall "power" (whatever that means), while matching them in price. I think MS will heavily subsidize their system, but only if needed because of Sony doing the same. In fact, if, despite MS' best efforts, PS ends up more powerful, I wouldn't be surprised if MS subsidized the hardware enough to launch at a lower price. MS needs people in the XB ecosystem to drive subscription sales. They've already shown us that they're willing to subsidize for that purpose when they gave up to three years of Gamepass Ultimate upgrade for $1. As others have mentioned, it is tough to see how subsidizing hardware will do much at this point in the gen, so subsidizing the service was the way to go (one could argue that they're still trying with hardware a bit, with the $149 XB1SAD right now). But, that math changes with the launch of next gen systems. I expect they will throw as much money as necessary at pricing in order to beat Sony on one of the two fronts.



think-man said:
I thought MS wasn't worried about Sony?

Lol.  It is strange that they would even pursue this.  The problem early on with the PS4 vs XBO is that Sony caught them with their pants down.  We can tell that MS was focused on the cable TV thing, and not streaming, since when they revealed their console they just added a quick bit about sharing that seemed tacked on (probably just thrown in there after Sony got such a great response from the share feature), and focused on cable TV and watching sports.  It also seems that they were late with their devkits, too, or were just trying to cover up the power difference, because many demos shown at E3 that year were better builds running on HW much more powerful than the XBO, leading to downgrades in a few of their exclusives.  So, why purposely fuck with your devs like this, now?  This could cause them to make games that aren't suited for some newer tech they will have to use and/or cause a delay in development for games for their launch window. 

I think there are two real possibilities here.  Either MS is just behind on their devkits, since HW isn't as big a focus for them anymore, and this is just some lame excuse to why they are behind, or this is just a complete fabrication.



VAMatt said:
There is no chance that XB will launch at a higher price than Sony unless it is much more powerful. More realistically, MS will try to edge out PS in overall "power" (whatever that means), while matching them in price. I think MS will heavily subsidize their system, but only if needed because of Sony doing the same. In fact, if, despite MS' best efforts, PS ends up more powerful, I wouldn't be surprised if MS subsidized the hardware enough to launch at a lower price. MS needs people in the XB ecosystem to drive subscription sales. They've already shown us that they're willing to subsidize for that purpose when they gave up to three years of Gamepass Ultimate upgrade for $1. As others have mentioned, it is tough to see how subsidizing hardware will do much at this point in the gen, so subsidizing the service was the way to go (one could argue that they're still trying with hardware a bit, with the $149 XB1SAD right now). But, that math changes with the launch of next gen systems. I expect they will throw as much money as necessary at pricing in order to beat Sony on one of the two fronts.

Xbox is not MS.  Could MS afford to subsidize their HW to $199 and almost automatically win?  Sure.  Will they, though.  Hell, no.  They are moving on to streaming.  That's why they are giving such deep cuts to push GamePass and probably will for xCloud, too.  If they wanted to, they could have subsidized the XBO out of the gate, i.e. a new gen, they chose not to.  Not even when Spencer took over did they subsidize the XBO without the Kinect to beat the PS4.  And that was in 2014, when it actually could have made a big difference to how this gen played out.  Gaming HW is not a big focus for MS.  In fact, quite a few of their investors wanted them to drop it.  Even Bill Gates said he would be fine with that early this gen.

Also, they don't need to sell HW to push their GamePass/xCloud service.  You will always have a few million who will get a Xbox no matter what.  And they are putting GamePass and xCloud on PC, a much larger install base.  If Scarlett doesn't work out, I wouldn't be surprised to see them put it on Switch, maybe eventually PS5.