This takes me back at all the excuses made back in the 8th gen war. There was a new excuse every year.

"Doesn't need big promotions to sell."

Xbox Series S w/ free controller will be $250 at Target this Thursday https://t.co/TNJEED5liH pic.twitter.com/0tc1vX5hyc

— Wario64 (@Wario64) October 4, 2022

I'm pretty sure VGC and Famitsu are both overtracking Xbox, as opposed to Ampere Analysis and MediaCreate undertracking it. The truth is likely somewhere in the middle.

I'm not invested on the Series X|S and don't need to make any excuses. I just see the 50 or 60 million as unrealistic and i showed the numbers and the trends of the one and 360 compared to the X|S. The lead of the one over 360 never got as high as the X|S over the 360 and it started to decrease hard after month 26. That is there on the charts and is not an excuse.

Same for me. I'm not invested at all into Xbox (never owned any of them and don't plan in buying one). Just a quick look at the sales charts and remembering that the XBO never consistently sold above 100k weekly or even just anywhere near that while the XS does shows that the XS should have much better sales in the end than the XBO had unless sales get cut short for whatever reason - hence why I asked what reason they could thing of that could cut the console short.

Yeah, Microsoft are doing some promotions, so? If you look at the 360 vs XBO chart above, you can clearly see that the XBO only managed to build up any lead during the holiday season, while subsequently loosing over the course of the rest of the year. The XBO had a baseline that's much lower than the XS has. But more on that later, let's compare baselines first.

I'm taking the month of May as baseline since it's the one where the console sells the least. This is so far true for both the XBO and the XS.

XBO's best year had just 268k sales in May, while the other years it was hovering between 230k and 260k. This means weekly sales in May have been consistently under 70k, with dips down to under 60k.

XS easily beats this, with 393k last year and 482k this year. It is also the only month this year where the XS didn't sell at least 500k.

In fact, the 393k from last year is already a pretty high bar for the XBO, as at no point in it's life in the months of January, April, May and July XBO even got close to that number and just managed to beat it once in August, and XBO only managed twice to get above 500k monthly sales (and even then just barely so, with 501k in June 2015 and 507k in March 2018) in any month between January and August.

So even if the console would be overtracked, it would need to be very massively so just to give the XBO a fighting chance. XBO only sold during the holidays because it got massive promotions during that time, otherwise it wouldn't have sold at all. The XS meanwhile has a much higher baseline and doesn't need to rely on the holidays to sell, but that doesn't mean that they can't do promotions to further push the consoles.

It's impossible for us to know the true weekly or monthly sales curve of Series XS. Estimates vary greatly between trackers, and Microsoft refuses to share the necessary information. It's safe to say it's ahead of Xbox One launch aligned, but maybe not by that much.

I don't remember the deals history of the Xbox One, but I do remember that it started overpriced and bundled with Kinect until that was removed a few months later. I also know that it wasn't boosted by COVID like all the current consoles have been for years. You argued the other day that the pandemic was artificially and temporarily increasing demand, what happened to that? You think only Playstation demand was benefiting from COVID? What about inflation and the rising living expenses in Europe? Would that also only affect Playstation's future and not Xbox's? I thought "launch aligned" was misleading according to your own logic.

A key difference between X1 and Series XS is that PS4 met demand and was avaiable in large quantities soon after launch, unlike PS5. This put Series S in a temporarily favorable position in that a lot of people that couldn't find a PS5 (or Series X) and wanted a nextgen console ran out of patience and had to settle with a Series S instead (or X if available). Series S is also the weaker system relative to launch, meaning it probably won't maintain a high enough demand throughout the generation without aggressive pricedrops and frequent crazy deals (even those wouldn't necessarily be enough in a time where PS5 is plentiful, tho they could be in the context of an increasingly greedy Sony). And unless Microsoft manages to massively ramp up Series X production soon enough, annual hardware sales gradually falling in line with the X1 or slightly above that is definitely a possibility ("Under 60 million" could still have it at several million units above the X1). A $100 off deal for an already cheap system, in its biggest market, in a non-holiday period, does not bode well for Series S's demand and future.

Series S is often sold at $250 in Europe. IIRC, X1 early on only got hot deals in the holidays season. This basically means that "promotions" may be inflating Series S's sales as much as they inflated X1's in the early years. Seires X has potential, but it looks like MS just can't produce many of them and is trying to condition people into wanting the Seires S which they can produce in very high volumes. But we're not addressing the elephant in the room:

What if Series S is no longer mandated in the middle of or later in the generation? Do we still combine its sales with the Series X or do we consider them two different consoles? I'm combining them now because they share the same library of games, but if that changes, controversy would follow and "generations" would end for Microsoft.

I still think it will outsell X1 by a decent margin (10-15 million ... and maybe even 25+ million if the generation lasts longer). But depending on Microsoft's plans and what's causing Series X's production to be so limited, it still might end up around as low as X1. Things should and will be more interesting now that PS5's production is considerably improving. Looking forward to the first half of 2023 which should provide some answers.

I think Microsoft's acquisitions will become serious trouble for Sony in the PS6 generation, not this one.

Well there is no appetite for Xbox console, MS had the clever idea of putting 2 different machines on the same time on the market, having the lackluster cheaper one more available than the most interesting one, while the direct competitor sells everything it produces in seconds after almost 2 years.

And with Microsoft keep pushing Game Pass subscriptions without even the need to own an Xbox (I think by the end of the generation, GP streaming will be as widely available as Netflix, on Smart tvs, Shield/Roku/Appletv type boxes) and  even selling 1 year of GP Ultimate subscription with an Xbox controller.

So comparison charts aren’t really a good indication for Xbox, as if you compare Xbox One and PS3 sales, I’m pretty sure the first one is above the second one, but we know how it ends.

So yeah, after the big GP/Series momentum Xbox had at lauch, the lack of new games (I believe there was absolutely no big 1st party game on Xbox this year so far) and the meh availability of the Series S will remind people of MS being MS as always.

And I know the « next year will be awesome » theory, I read about it back in 2014, and everybody was saying Xbox was going to be very big in 2022, but here we are.

I mean I believe they never had a year above 10 million units, and after 6+ years, you can hardly go above 60 million if you end up selling 7-8 million per year.

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There is no appetite for Xbox consoles huh? News to me. 

And? Xbox Game Pass subs account for the primary number of subscribers. Game Pass is pushing Xbox sales, not the other way around. Cloud gaming still has a way to go before it has mass appeal. 

Comparision charts 1+ year in is a good indicator. For launch numbers, clearly not. It was pretty early on we could tell the Xbone sales were going struggle, especially after a year. It was frontloaded to start but dropped significantly early on. While Series X|S are consistently 150-170K or more weekly, and sales are higher this year than last year. Pretty easy to tell it's going to sell quite a bit more than the Xbone. Easily over 60M and probably 70M+. 

So far that reminder hasn't clicked in, I guess. Sales are higher year over year. It also helps knowing Xbox 1st party is going to be significantly stronger going forward. No way to downplay it, this isn't 2014 Xbox. 2020 and 2021 were very solid years for Xbox 1st party. This year is missing a big AAA releases after Redfall and Starfield delays. It's bad for 1st party, but people who are buying an Xbox now and getting GP have tons of games to play. 

The first half of next year has Starfield, Redfall, Forza Motorsport, and Minecraft Legends. That's a pretty damn good first half. We still don't know what the 2nd half will bring. 

How ?

If they keep selling under 10 million per year, how by the end of the generation (probably in 5 years now) can it go above 70 million ?

It's like people claiming the Switch will barely hit 20 million this year, I don't understand how people do their math.

First of all, we have no idea if it will ALWAYS sell under 10M a year, we only have the data based off the first year, which I think we can all agree isn't exactly accurate to demand. We also have no idea how long this generation will last. My guess is 7-8 years since the last 2 gens were 7+. 

Series X|S sales have been averaging around 170K weekly, which is still less than demand. I imagine they could average 200K+ weekly as we saw in Feb-Mar 22 when they had better supply. That easily puts them damn near 10M with averaging 200K weekly sales for the year, then toss in holiday sales. Xbox could surpass 10M next year or the year after depending on how long the shortages continue.