Good point. With price parity Sony still has more powerful hardware, but MS has kinect. If MS can show it being worthwhile, those two could cancel each other out in terms of perceived value. But can they? They haven't managed very well so far.
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Will MS go for Sony's throat at E3 and undercut their PS4 MSRP ?
- Thread starter Apophis2036
- Start date
Good point. With price parity Sony still has more powerful hardware, but MS has kinect. If MS can show it being worthwhile, those two could cancel each other out in terms of perceived value. But can they? They haven't managed very well so far.
Dragonborn
Member
That's almost exactly my experience. Between the beta and the game I put about 13 hours into it. It felt incredibly bare bones. After the initial novelty of the wall running and Titans wore off, I realized it just wasn't for me. It got boring and so I returned it. Still, I think they have a very good foundation for a sequel. They just need to really iron it out and take their time
I imagine the community on 360 will grow more since people want to play with their friends who more than likely will have 360s as well
I find it incredible that we heard about Infamous' numbers before we did TF.
Mr Moose
Member
Would you say they are going to kill Sony at E3?
SwiftDeath
Member
That thread title is something else
On topic, I believe at best we get a price match to $400 for the XB1 with Kinect bundled in
I believe MS is playing a somewhat dangerous game right now in trying to quickly offer consumers a much improved value prop that they do not intend to keep in the long run. I.E. some of the deals we've been getting lately may in fact be better than what we get this fall depending on how things pan out
We'll see though
As per other questions
On topic, I believe at best we get a price match to $400 for the XB1 with Kinect bundled in
I believe MS is playing a somewhat dangerous game right now in trying to quickly offer consumers a much improved value prop that they do not intend to keep in the long run. I.E. some of the deals we've been getting lately may in fact be better than what we get this fall depending on how things pan out
We'll see though
As per other questions
- Won't impact global sales as Europe doesn't care for Xbox nor does Asia or South America best I can tell. Australia/NZ seems to fall more PS but hard to tell on that one
- Cerny has already stated that the PS4 was designed to allow for rapid price cuts if needed. Albeit it may be misinterpreting what he said. I think Sony has more room to cut prices than MS does sans kinect personally
EmeraldSwords
Banned
Get rid of Kinect and I'll buy an Xbox one.
Uno Venova
Banned
They definitely need to do something permanent, right now they definitely can't be selling what they want to sell with new discounts and bundles every day.
X1 will go down in price, so Sony will react and cut the PS4. Then MS will be like "Oh no you didn't" and cut their price again, forcing Sony to cut even further.
And the spiral will continue until the PS4 costs $4, the X1 costs $1, and the Wii U costs $465....because reasons.
And the spiral will continue until the PS4 costs $4, the X1 costs $1, and the Wii U costs $465....because reasons.
BabyFaceKillah
Member
Xbox One w/ Kinect - $449.99
Xbox One without Kinect - $399.99
Xbox One without Kinect - $399.99
Why do they need to get rid of the kinect for you to buy one? If the problem is price wouldnt it make more sense to just have them lower the price and keep the kinect rather than remove the kinect to lower the price and just be a weaker ps4?
Earthanoid
Member
MS has a chance to turn things around, but they're fighting an uphill battle unless Sony really messes up. Sony would never have caught up to MS in the last gen if not for RROD early in the X360s life and MS dropping the ball on exclusives later in the X360s life. MS relied too much on their big tentpole franchises rather than developing new IPs, and they paid for it later and are still paying for it now. Sony could mess up similarly with the PS4 but MS can't count on them messing up.
People also need to remember that Xbox is a division of MS that needs to make money on its own, the fact that MS has billions in the bank does not mean that they'll take losses on Xbox. For consumer products corporations also do projections on a regular basis as to whether a product is making money, they can't suddenly drop the X1 cost without messing up those projections. Take a look at the original Surface for an example of this; they stuck with the premium pricing for a long time on those devices and took a big loss due to unsold units, rather than cutting prices earlier on.
I don't see anything more than a $50 cut, if that, at E3. More likely they'll keep the price the same and bundle in a launch game or TF instead.
People also need to remember that Xbox is a division of MS that needs to make money on its own, the fact that MS has billions in the bank does not mean that they'll take losses on Xbox. For consumer products corporations also do projections on a regular basis as to whether a product is making money, they can't suddenly drop the X1 cost without messing up those projections. Take a look at the original Surface for an example of this; they stuck with the premium pricing for a long time on those devices and took a big loss due to unsold units, rather than cutting prices earlier on.
I don't see anything more than a $50 cut, if that, at E3. More likely they'll keep the price the same and bundle in a launch game or TF instead.
Sweep the leg and get Sony a body bag. No mercy.
Syphon Filter
Member
I dont think sony will drop at all,they are trying to make a profit. also $50 wont be enough for a price cut.
You just won't admit the 360 won will you?
EmeraldSwords
Banned
I just don't want to spend money on something that will just keep collecting dust. I have no use for the kinect. Price isn't an issue, for me anyway. Even if they lower the price of the console and still include Kinect, I'll still wait for a Kinectless bundle. Not interested.
I remember seeing somewhere that the PS4 is profitable after either 1 or 2 games. That's not bad at all. And with the fact that the costs can go down for production as GDDR5 does, that means Sony has the easiest route to keeping cost efficient, not just cost effective.
I'm not sure we can know what amount of losses MS is willing to take on Xbox at this point with the leadership changes. If they still view Xbox as a trojan horse they may still be willing to eat losses to try to make it work. They could also just be treating it as a normal division and are only willing to keep it around as long as there's profit. They could also look at even a modest profit as not being worth their time and will be selling/shutting it down if it doesn't make a huge turnaround.
Not trying to spread FUD or worry, I'm just trying to say we don't really know what Xbox means to MS right now.
Arrogant Bastard
Banned
Yep.
I do not get why people think all this occurs in a vacuum. MS cannot 'win' by engaging in a price war, they simply cannot. IF MS attempts to play the generation in that regard you can expect Sony to go toe-to-toe with them.
How exactly do people expect this to play out?
MS drops the price of the X1 to $379 and what Sony just sits there? Not going to happen. MS needs to switch gears and focus on games, which they seem to be doing.
They will probably make it $450 with a game officially, or $400 without a game and still packing Kinect. Unfortunately for MS they can never go back to $500. Stores lowering the price on the Titanfall bundle has set a new price of $450 with a game, and MS will have to continue that value, or sales will drop off a cliff. I see them selling the Titanfall bundle for $450 until stock dries up, and then they may have to either make a new $450 bundle, or drop the price of the standalone unit to $400.
MS's biggest problem isn't price at this point though, it is games. The system with Titanfall at $450 is a pretty good value, but unless there are must have exclusives then there really isn't a whole lot of a reason to jump on it. I have thought about picking up the bundle a couple of times, but when I stop and think about what I would actually play on the system, I decide to hold off on it. With all multi-platform games pretty much guaranteed to be worse on the system, MS has to sell their console almost entirely on exclusive features and games. When you look at what is on offer, there isn't a whole lot there that screams "must have" IMO. There are some decent games for sure, as I would like to play Ryse and Dead Rising, but not enough to buy the system. Those are more of games that I would buy for cheap later on down the line when I get the system for another game.
When I think about future exclusive offerings Sunset Overdrive is the only thing that comes to mind for this year, and that just isn't enough to get me to buy a system, and most consumers won't have even heard of it yet. E3 is going to be incredibly important for MS, as what exclusives they show for this year are going to have to be system sellers.
MS's biggest problem isn't price at this point though, it is games. The system with Titanfall at $450 is a pretty good value, but unless there are must have exclusives then there really isn't a whole lot of a reason to jump on it. I have thought about picking up the bundle a couple of times, but when I stop and think about what I would actually play on the system, I decide to hold off on it. With all multi-platform games pretty much guaranteed to be worse on the system, MS has to sell their console almost entirely on exclusive features and games. When you look at what is on offer, there isn't a whole lot there that screams "must have" IMO. There are some decent games for sure, as I would like to play Ryse and Dead Rising, but not enough to buy the system. Those are more of games that I would buy for cheap later on down the line when I get the system for another game.
When I think about future exclusive offerings Sunset Overdrive is the only thing that comes to mind for this year, and that just isn't enough to get me to buy a system, and most consumers won't have even heard of it yet. E3 is going to be incredibly important for MS, as what exclusives they show for this year are going to have to be system sellers.
Angelus Errare
Banned
Imagine if MS doesn't change the price at all at E3, but instead Sony drops the price of PS4 by $25. D:
Uh... PS3 sales passed the 360s several months ago, on a WW level. In the US, it was no contenst, 40m to 25m, or so, but the PS3 passed the 360 not too long ago. How does that qualify as having won?
yep.
The Xbox APU is larger and more complex so likely more expensive and might be a bit slower to die shrink (but not by much). Both will be pretty fixed at this size for a while though, so no major savings yet
8GB DDr3 should be notably cheaper than GDDR5, but will be pretty much at the bottom of the price curve. So they'll have savings now, but won't be able to save much more later on. Sony are eating more cost on this at the moment, but those ram chips will drop further, bringing savings. Again, not short term
Kinect is obviously an additional costs for MS, but at least taking some of the tech in-house helps them control the costs a bit. But this will be a weight around their neck for a while
Most of the rest of the internals are a tie - standard bluray drive, 500GB HDD. Maybe Sony has supply chain advantages to eke out savings Vs MS here, and the internal PSU will save some packaging costs at least.
Absolutely agree on the dangerous game they are playing now though. Some of the retailer discounts+ bundles are getting to the point where MS can't realistically match them officially. So any official price cut could end up looking relatively bad value for money, or a damp squib
US sales count more because Americans are bigger than people in other countries.
If that answer doesn't suffice, I fall back on US = World.
Almost noone care about Xbox outside US, UK ans maybe Germany.
They could go with 300 euro price and (almost) noone would buy it.
I know that is pretty difficult to comprehend, but it is like that.
No, it's still the Wii>>360>PS3 in terms of sales
captainraincoat
Banned
i dont think they really need to do anything at the moment....a majority of the ps4s first party lineup is either delayed or will likely be delayed until next year and the indie stuff they have been releasing has been in word...shithouse
They just need to focus on fixing the horrible UI and get their first party stuff out the door on time and i think they will be in a good position
certainly not number one but not the psvita levels of failure
i have not turned my ps4 on since i completed infamous and my xbone is only turned on to play the odd game of titanfall which im started to get really bored of
Give me some games to play Sony and MS
They just need to focus on fixing the horrible UI and get their first party stuff out the door on time and i think they will be in a good position
certainly not number one but not the psvita levels of failure
i have not turned my ps4 on since i completed infamous and my xbone is only turned on to play the odd game of titanfall which im started to get really bored of
Give me some games to play Sony and MS
A lot of people said the Xbox was designed to both do the operating system switching fast and go down in price quickly. The ESRAM for example is likely go down in price much quicker than GDDR5.
Uhm... I'm pretty sure it's something like Wii (100+m), PS3 (84-5m) and 360 (83-84m). I'm not talking landslide numbers, or runaway numbers, but the PS3 LTD passed the 360s.
Syphon Filter
Member
Not sure if serious.
styl3s
Member
They could do a "budget" X1 that doesn't have the useless cable shit and no kinect for $350. Maybe even drop the HDD down to like 320gb or something.
I'm 99% sure he's joking, to make fun of the people putting such heavy emphasis on the US market.
You can go ahead and add that last 1%. I thought it was fairly obvious.
Do you mean physically?
Goddamn it. LOL!
PoloBlue28
Banned
Sony posted 80m sales at least a full month after Microsoft did. The 360 is still ahead most likely.
'MURICA!
Dark_AnNiaLatOr
Member
Well, right now, they're selling the titanfall bundle for $450. I think they could definitely do $349 without the kinect.
Don't think they will kill Sony. I do feel that MS is hungry to get more market share, way more than Sony.
jhmtehgamr20xx
Banned
Why would Sega want to be purchased by Microsoft? Makes no sense.
But to answer the question, I really don't see them dropping $150 from the launch price in less than a year. That just screams desperation. They might officially go to $450 or maybe $400 at the absolute MOST, but no more than that. And you better believe if they price cut at E3, they will not price-cut again for the holidays, or 2015. At all. They'd need all the sales they could get then to recoup the losses from the price cut and, 'ya know, actually make a profit again.
Also, Sony could price-cut PS4 this holiday if sales continue to be this solid, and would actually be making a profit w/ the price cut. You'd be looking at a $450/$400 XBO vs $350/$325 PS4 for 2015, which would be even worst for MS than it is right now.
They can't win the price war.
Those people aren't really correct: DDR3 ram will only get more expensive because ram manufacturers will cease producing it once it isn't a market necessity. Stacked DDR3 and DDR4 will be on the market some time this year, and will completely overrun it in 2015.
Just look at prices for 8GB DDR compared to 8GB DDR3. DDR should be cheaper since it's not as good, but (basing this off about two years ago from one retailer) simply 2GB could cost up to $70.
The price reduction of the ESRAM is nullified by the costs DDR3 ram will add to the system as time goes on.
SwiftDeath
Member
From my understanding of it, the XB1's design allows for a better price cut due to a better ability to shrink the overall die space versus had they gone with an eDRAM approach that would've required a separate board for it.
It's been a while since this discussion was brought up last but in essence the eSRAM approach allows everything onto one die space and thus you focus on shrinking just that one die.
When you succeed in shrinking it, the cost savings are greater than if you had to deal with a daughter board for the eDRAM as well however as the board is much larger because of it, shrinking it will take longer
If someone in the know has suggested otherwise though I would love to read about it as I'm fascinated at the future prospects of both designs and how small they might get
But they likely have contracts in place with suppliers to produce kinects at a rate that doesn't make sense outside of a bundle. At this point, not bundling it probably has it's own cost in terms of dealing with that level of production. They may be stuck with the cost of the Kinect for now regardless.
postcyberpunk
Banned
Good point.
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