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[slavesnyder]

(...) Is the XBO really "struggling"? Are their current XBO sales numbers really so far off the mark from expectations based on the 360? Or is it more that the PS4 is looking more like PS2 and it has everyone losing their shit?

I think MS wanted more than they have now. And before the reveal everyone expected that the xbox would wipe the floor with the ps4. now, afterwards, they can still feel okayish. xbox is not doomed, but they lost the opportunity to win big.

 

[blurredvision]

All this continued talk about memory and GPU being a cause when we should all know Microsoft is behind because of two very obvious reasons:

1.) It was $100 more at launch.
2.) Internet gaming community hate/outrage towards the always-online DRM spilled over into mainstream media, which we all know sensationalizes everything for ratings.

 

[AmFreak]

Is the XBO really "struggling"? Are their current XBO sales numbers really so far off the mark from expectations based on the 360?

Yes they are.
They fucked up big time, if they just had repeated the Xbox 360 they would look much much stronger. I would even take a bet on this and say they would be the market leader.

But let's not kid ourselves into thinking the Playstation brand is something that is expected to be crushed by another game console. PS3 was a fluke of bad sales and price was the number one reason.

Playstation was never crushed because there are many reasons for it, not because it is "Playstation".

 

[Krakn3Dfx]

Maybe for people on GAF the power of the XB1 was the reason to get choose a PS4 over the XB1, but I think for the average person that's far from the truth.

The average person doesn't know specs, but the average person knows "X is more powerful than Y", and will base purchasing decisions on it once that sentiment makes it into the mainstream, which in this case it very much has. This isn't like console gaming in the PS2/OG XBox era, when information was still difficult to obtain and decipher, people need to stop acting like we're still basing our information on gaming magazines and BBS forums.

 

[>-Baron-Spamedi-<]

Ridiculous. DRM-gate and mandatory Kinect were much bigger hurdles than 720p vs 1080p (or 900p vs 1080p).

MS had to claw their way out of a PR hole last fall that they buried themselves in with the reveal. When those first preorder numbers dropped, no one even knew about CoD and Titanfall resolutions.

It's not ridiculous. In fact you are both right in a way.
The truth is there wasn't ONE factor that lead to what happened. It was a combination of DRM gate, mandatory Kinect AND the price difference and GDDR5 /weak GPU all feeding into the snowballing negative groundswell of opinion post E3 that Microsoft had blown it. I would also add that their US-centric and 'TV, TV, TV, NFL' focussed announcement at E3 added to the toxic mix for a lot of people outside of the US too.
You can't single out one single factor as they all played a part.

Just to respond to your resolutiongate point :
I was aware of the potential power gap without having knowledge of the CoD resolution differences. Figures were circulating in advance of release which allowed estimation bandwith differences, the number of ROPs, likely Tflops performance and they were clearly demonstrating there was likely to be a large difference in power.
This is where the 'secret sauce' and 'do you seriously think MS would give up a 30% power difference/b-b-but MS designed Direct X' arguments blindly defending MS' design choices arose from. People could not believe MS would have allowed Sony such an advantage based on the known component performances .
This was all in advance of resolutiongate.

 

[BigDug13]

I think MS wanted more than they have now. And before the reveal everyone expected that the xbox would wipe the floor with the ps4. now, afterwards, they can still feel okayish. xbox is not doomed, but they lost the opportunity to win big.

But why would anyone expect the XBO to "wipe the floor" with the PS4? The 360 and PS3 had EQUAL sales at that point. Even with PS3 releasing a year late at $600, it still managed to break even in sales with 360.

Who were these misguided people who assumed the PS4 would get crushed?

 

[travisbickle]

It was the decision to make Kinect the redeeming feature.

They were planning to launch an under-powered DRM-filled console and the positive to help consumers swallow that was Kinect, and we all found out that was going to spy on us!!!

 

[Bgamer90]

The other aspect that people forget is that Playstation dominating is not a fluke when you look at Playstation's history. Playstation 3 NOT completely dominating was the fluke. Last gen was Playstation brand's only weak generation, and it still ended up with 80+ million in sales.

Now people are shocked that MS's "PR clusterfuck" console isn't dominating or even keeping pace. Is it really so shocking when you look at the last 4 generations of sales?

MS is back to being hungry MS. They're making strong moves, releasing quality exclusives, and seemingly doing all the right things that hungry MS has been known for. But let's not kid ourselves into thinking the Playstation brand is something that is expected to be crushed by another game console. PS3 was a fluke of bad sales and price was the number one reason.

Is the XBO really "struggling"? Are their current XBO sales numbers really so far off the mark from expectations based on the 360? Or is it more that the PS4 is looking more like PS2 and it has everyone losing their shit?

Very good points.

 

[suntoryTime]

The article is trying to distill all Microsoft's problems with the Xbox One into a single thing. In other words: Microsoft did one thing wrong.

In reality Microsoft basically did everything wrong:

- DRM
- more expensive
- less powerful
- boneheaded executive comments

 

[HawksWinStanley]

Wasn't Sony's choice to go with GDDR5 by pure luck?

I thought I remember reading on here that Sony was further behind MS in production on the new consoles and had GDDR3 spec'd for the PS4 but then there was some kind of fluke weather incident or act of God at the factory producing the memory and it ended up being cheaper for them to go with GDDR5 while MS (being ahead in production) already had whatever stock they needed.

I'm sure I butchered the hell out of that but it more or less just became a smart/lucky business move by Sony more so than a fuck up by MS.

 

[chithanh]

Only because You dont understand that both are strictly related due to limited die size.

No, they are not. The problem is that the XB1's GPU is memory bandwidth starved due to DDR3 and so adding more CUs would only have increased the cost and not the performance of the chip.

4A Games' chief technical officer Oles Shishkovstov explained this to Eurogamer:

I've seen a lot of cases while profiling Xbox One when the GPU could perform fast enough but only when the CPU is basically idle. Unfortunately I've even seen the other way round, when the CPU does perform as expected but only under idle GPU, even if it (the CPU) is supposed to get prioritised memory access.

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/d...its-really-like-to-make-a-multi-platform-game

 

[Beelzebubs]

"Those who follow the console market will point out that weaker machines haven't always lost" And they don't mention the Wii?

 

[J-Tier]

Personally it was the bad PR and attitude under Mattrick's leadership that killed Microsoft for me.

I'd say it was a culmination of reasons and bleeding into the mainstream rather than any single reason.

 

[slavesnyder]

But why would anyone expect the XBO to "wipe the floor" with the PS4? The 360 and PS3 had EQUAL sales at that point. Even with PS3 releasing a year late at $600, it still managed to break even in sales with 360.

Who were these misguided people who assumed the PS4 would get crushed?

with all the talk about sony being nearly broke and microsoft's talent in convincing 3rd parties for exclusivity, people expected that after the ps2 leading, ps3 only managing a tie that the ps4 would go under.
of course, now everyone knew better from the start...

 

[Bgamer90]

Yes they are.
They fucked up big time, if they just had repeated the Xbox 360 they would look much much stronger. I would even take a bet on this and say they would be the market leader.

Maybe in North America but not overall. Again, the 360 came out a whole year before the PS3 and the PS3 still caught up to it. The brand is simply more popular worldwide.

The Xbox One would have never topped the worldwide sales of the PS4 -- even if MS didn't make any mistakes. Releasing the console at the same time as the PS4 pretty much set everything in stone in terms of ranking (Sony #1, MS #2, Nintendo #3).

 

[borghe]

did the memory decision lead to them putting in a significantly weaker GPU as well?

actually it did. the ESRAM is on die.. meaning less physical space for CUs.

 

[A_Gorilla]

Is the XBO really "struggling"? Are their current XBO sales numbers really so far off the mark from expectations based on the 360?

The XB1 being $150 cheaper less than a year after it launched (outside of maybe the 3D0 has this ever happened before?) suggests that MS are NOT happy with their sales numbers.

 

[Guevara]

Wow what a weird article.

 

[BigDug13]

Wasn't Sony's choice to go with GDDR5 by pure luck?

I thought I remember reading on here that Sony was further behind MS in production on the new consoles and had GDDR3 spec'd for the PS4 but then there was some kind of fluke weather incident or act of God at the factory producing the memory and it ended up being cheaper for them to go with GDDR5 while MS (being ahead in production) already had whatever stock they needed.

I'm sure I butchered the hell out of that but it more or less just became a smart/lucky business move by Sony more so than a fuck up by MS.

They had always decided on GDDR5 due to its speed, but the amount simply grew. I think early dev kits had something like 2GB GDDR5. Then they moved up to 4GB GDDR5. Then they came out with their reveal and announced 8GB GDDR5 and I'm sure Microsoft shit their pants.

Microsoft going with DDR3 and ESRAM decision was based on their OS strategy and wanting a guarantee of 8GB of RAM. Going with DDR3 ensured that they could do it. And now they're paying the price.

 

[DarthWalden]

I couldn't agree more. It's frustrating because I love everything about my xb1. I love the multitasking, snap, TV features, kinect integration, Smartglass etc and they've been bringing it with the exclusives. .. But as much as I try to brush it off the graphical disparity is something that always bothers me... Playing in 900p when the same priced rival console plays those same games in 1080p is some bullshit and makes it hard to throw my full weight behind the xb1 when someone asks if its worth it.

 

[heyf00L]

The average person doesn't know specs, but the average person knows "X is more powerful than Y", and will base purchasing decisions on it once that sentiment makes it into the mainstream, which in this case it very much has. This isn't like console gaming in the PS2/OG XBox era, when information was still difficult to obtain and decipher, people need to stop acting like we're still basing our information on gaming magazines and BBS forums.

MS had a piece of paper similar to this in every game store. I saw them all over. They really played up the "more powerful" angle, and it was true, and we instantly saw it in the games.

 

[many places]

The regular consumer doesn't know and doesn't care. It was the rumor/fact that nearly killed the xbox. People today still thinks the xbox is always online and drm fest.

I honestly dont know anyonewho still thinks that. Where do you live?

 

[Bgamer90]

The XB1 being $150 cheaper less than a year after it launched (outside of maybe the 3D0 has this ever happened before?) suggests that MS are NOT happy with their sales numbers.

It arguably happened with the PS1 when adding in inflation ($100 in 1996 = $150 now) + the fact that there was only one SKU.

 

[Dysun]

The reason was TVTVTVSports DRM gate.

Always will be

 

[CadetMahoney]

- paying much more for inferior hardware
- microsoft, no one likes them
- DRM attempt until the backlash

It wasn't the ram.

 

[A_Gorilla]

It arguably happened with the PS1 when adding in inflation ($100 in 1996 = $150 now) + the fact that there was only one SKU.

PS1 came out in 1994 though, so it was two years later.

- paying much more for inferior hardware
- microsoft, no one likes them
- DRM attempt until the backlash

It wasn't the ram.

Hey, I like MS

Spoiler

Compared to Apple, at least.

 

[mnannola]

$500 vs $400

If anyone wants to point to one reason, this has to be it. The average gamer doesn't give a damn how many P's a game has.

People saw the choices, they saw one was $100 less and had the same games on it. They looked at Xbox and found that it had a Kinect, but it was not worth the extra $100 that Microsoft was asking.

 

[DBT85]

Wasn't Sony's choice to go with GDDR5 by pure luck?

I thought I remember reading on here that Sony was further behind MS in production on the new consoles and had GDDR3 spec'd for the PS4 but then there was some kind of fluke weather incident or act of God at the factory producing the memory and it ended up being cheaper for them to go with GDDR5 while MS (being ahead in production) already had whatever stock they needed.

I'm sure I butchered the hell out of that but it more or less just became a smart/lucky business move by Sony more so than a fuck up by MS.

No, it was always GDDR5. originally they had expected the final product to use 4GB, shortly before announce larger GDDR5 chip was announced and because of some other things, they could just put those chips in without huge upheaval and jump from 4 to 8.

 

[StanleyStutters]

Last generation I only owned a 360, this gen I went with PS4. Honestly, it came down to a series of things.

- Microsoft seemed to be more focused on entertainment and not games

- DRM concerns

- Price

- Sony's exclusives interested me more

- PS+ was more suited to my interests than Gold was

- Kinect mandatory

I don't think you can point to one specific mistake MS made, it was a series of moves by them and Sony.

 

[CoG]

$500 vs $400

If anyone wants to point to one reason, this has to be it. The average gamer doesn't give a damn how many P's a game has.

People saw the choices, they saw one was $100 less and had the same games on it. They looked at Xbox and found that it had a Kinect, but it was not worth the extra $100 that Microsoft was asking.

That doesn't really explain why at $400 vs $400 the PS4 has still been outselling the Xbox One even with high profile games like Madden bundled for free.

 

[AmFreak]

Maybe in North America but not overall. Again, the 360 came out a whole year before the PS3 and the PS3 still caught up to it. The brand is simply more popular worldwide.

I really can't stand these "the brand" and "xy is sony land". These are no real reasons.
Guess what? Before the 360 every country was sony land, but then it changed and there are reasons for it.
And that they were on the same level at the end of the gen would already fall apart if you took out japan. Japan will not come close to sell the same amount of consoles this gen.

They lost huge chunks of marketshare in the whole world.
We have numbers from Germany, France, Spain, Japan.
It looks disastrous everywhere.

The Xbox One would have never topped the worldwide sales of the PS4 -- even if MS didn't make any mistakes. Release the console at the same time as the PS4 pretty much set everything in stone in terms of ranking (Sony #1, MS #2, Nintendo #3).

See above - i completly disagree.

 

[BokehKing]

Too early and current Xbox One users will be annoyed. Why would you buy a new console after a company straight up abandons their previous one early.

Microsoft loves wasting money, let us trade in these Xbox one's for whatever it is they will come up with

 

[Bgamer90]

PS1 came out in 1994 though, so it was two years later.

Not in North America.

I also don't know if it had a price drop in areas outside of America at the same time. Possible though.

 

[QuantumZebra]

But why would anyone expect the XBO to "wipe the floor" with the PS4? The 360 and PS3 had EQUAL sales at that point. Even with PS3 releasing a year late at $600, it still managed to break even in sales with 360.

Who were these misguided people who assumed the PS4 would get crushed?

The people who equated Xbox 360's dominance of NA with dominance of PS3 in general (even though PS3 outsold Xbox 360 worldwide, a lot of people don't know that).

 

[Bgamer90]

I really can't stand these "the brand" and "xy is sony land". These are no real reasons.
Guess what? Before the 360 every country was sony land, but then it changed and there are reasons for it.

The 360 came out a full year before the PS3 and it had many (at the time) next gen versions of popular games. That helped it a lot in terms of gaining a solid userbase and library at the time the PS3 launched.

The Xbox One had tough same-gen competition right out of the gate though. Both systems came out at the same time. It really isn't comparable. The system would have needed to be at least $200 less for it to have a chance at beating the PS4 worldwide.

 

[BigDug13]

The people who equated Xbox 360's dominance of NA with dominance of PS3 in general (even though PS3 outsold Xbox 360 worldwide, a lot of people don't know that).

Well if we're talking about NA, then absolutely before these reveals I saw the potential for the next Xbox to dominate sales there much like it had done with the 360. But yeah, worldwide not a chance. Especially when the prices were announced.

I guess that must be true that people really didn't know that the PS3 outsold 360.

 

[Banjo-Kazooie]

The other aspect that people forget is that Playstation dominating is not a fluke when you look at Playstation's history. Playstation 3 NOT completely dominating was the fluke. Last gen was Playstation brand's only weak generation, and it still ended up with 80+ million in sales.

Now people are shocked that MS's "PR clusterfuck" console isn't dominating or even keeping pace. Is it really so shocking when you look at the last 4 generations of sales?

MS is back to being hungry MS. They're making strong moves, releasing quality exclusives, and seemingly doing all the right things that hungry MS has been known for. But let's not kid ourselves into thinking the Playstation brand is something that is expected to be crushed by another game console. PS3 was a fluke of bad sales and price was the number one reason.

Is the XBO really "struggling"? Are their current XBO sales numbers really so far off the mark from expectations based on the 360? Or is it more that the PS4 is looking more like PS2 and it has everyone losing their shit?

I think this is it.

Microsoft can still make money and perform to expectations, they just won't be the leader. They will be a distant second, but as long as they make money on services and software at acceptable levels, then I don't see any need for them to panic.

As you said, them being in the position they are now, might be meeting expectations, but they also have a hunger to try and catch up, at least in the US/UK, so as long as they continue to develop and fund great games and experiences, then I don't see any reason to worry.

Sure, PS4 will be the leader in specs, and development support, but that doesn't mean MS will dry up with 3rd party support like the WiiU (somewhat) has.

 

[v4skunk84]

You don't understand what I said. Read TFA.





I'll quote TFA:



Putting eSRAM on-die meant MS had to cut out GPU parts.

I'll wager MS was always going to use the 7770 gpu. Adding ESRAM only made the APU bigger, it does not mean they had to use a "smaller" gpu.

 

[StevieP]

Their goals required the 8gb from the start. They couldn't bank on a fluke like sony did, which went from 2 gb to 4gb on the design documents, then had a last minute lucky jump to 8. Microsoft had to design their console the way it did to meet the goals set out by the people who set them in the organization.

 

[Killer]

People don't give a shit about resolution except for those on forums.

News at 11.

 

[Cyriades]

All this continued talk about memory and GPU being a cause when we should all know Microsoft is behind because of two very obvious reasons:

1.) It was $100 more at launch.
2.) Internet gaming community hate/outrage towards the always-online DRM spilled over into mainstream media, which we all know sensationalizes everything for ratings.

Nope, it was memory and GPU.

 

[Oersted]

The regular consumer doesn't know and doesn't care. It was the rumor/fact that nearly killed the xbox. People today still thinks the xbox is always online and drm fest.

And even within those who know that it changed, is a huge level of distrust. Yeah.

 

[Ziltoidia 9]

The average customer doesn't know 2 shits or care 2 shits about RAM.

If this was 4 years into the cycle I can understand; I don't think there is enough disparity in the games yet.

In my opinion both have been pretty lack-luster when it comes to games so far.

 

[BigDug13]

People don't give a shit about resolution except for those on forums.

News at 11.

Do you think a pool of DDR3 with ESRAM vs an equal pool of GDDR5 with additional graphics processing and GPGPU capabilities will simply be "just a difference in resolution" as the generation moves forward?

 

[jay]

So the memory is their problem but also the price point with the memory they have? Then doesn't it make more sense to say pricing is the problem? You could say the PS3's original issue wasn't price, it was the fact that it didn't come with a BMW. But that would be dumb.

 

[Metalingus5150]

There was more than one bad decision. lol

 

[LegendofLex]

Um, what? That can't be "the" reason, but it certainly didn't help in the midst of a quagmire of other PR disasters.

- Weak effort to maintain customer loyalty - Literally the only meaningful thing MS did for Xbox 360 in the two years leading up to the launch of Xbox One was secure early Minecraft exclusivity. (Halo 4 seems to have been an all-around disappointment, otherwise I'd count it, too.) Meanwhile, Sony was breaking their necks to secure customer loyalty going into PS4 with excellent first-party software support, solid indie support, great PS+ programs, moving away from strategies that didn't work for PS3 early on, etc.

- Confirming people's worst suspicions - Microsoft pushed forward with DRM policies despite tremendous backlash even before they were officially announced. Backpedaling on those policies lifted some of the anxiety, but not enough to counteract Sony's basically flawless PR on the subject.

- Poor product vision - Microsoft's vision for Xbox One as an all-purpose entertainment box doesn't seem to have mapped at all to the desires of the vast majority of consumers. (Just like how it didn't really sell consoles last-gen.) Consumers were happy to get added support for TV/movie streaming in the boxes they already used to play video games (just like they're happy to stream content from their phones); they weren't looking to pay a hardware premium for a box designed around that multimedia functionality.

- Bad value - The price was a huge factor, especially since game consoles have been converging and becoming more like budget gaming PCs. No need to pay more for Kinect when all you wanted was a box that plays games.

- Games - Sony, having abandoned their hubris from last-gen, was much better able to position themselves as having all the relevant games. Not focusing on PS4 as an entertainment device also helped them position themselves as the company that cares more about gaming. Microsoft decided instead to go out guns blazing into the all-purpose media space (eyeing growth at the expense of an experience designed foremost around games), even incorporating their vision into the console's name.

 

[slavesnyder]

Well if we're talking about NA, then absolutely before these reveals I saw the potential for the next Xbox to dominate sales there much like it had done with the 360. But yeah, worldwide not a chance. Especially when the prices were announced.

I guess that must be true that people really didn't know that the PS3 outsold 360.

When the price was announced, we already new about other stuff like kinect and technical specs and drm and stuff.
I was talking about the time when we only knew that the new generation was coming, but still nothing about WHAT was coming. many thought that sony could not afford to get a machine together that was on par with the new xBox. that in the end they built a faster machine for a lower price (ignoring the kinect) was a huge surprise.

 

[oni-link]

It's funny how it takes a console being behind to really make the dev abandon the gimmicks and go hell for leather into making games for the system

The Dreamcast came out early after the Saturn did poorly and they pumped out good games

The PS3 launched with no games and for too much and did poorly and was written off for years, only for Sony to put a lot of effort into putting good games on the system, and that is what finally got it to pull back

The Wii U did poorly and now its really starting to build an amazing library, it's 2 years old and already has more must play games than the Wii

Now we have the Xbone, throwing gimmicks and nonsense away and finally investing in games (even if some are timed exclusives)

After the Wii did so well with underpowered specs and gimmicks it feels like everyone wanted to chase new markets and just expect the gamers to go along with any compromises they make, and time and time again gamers don't, and in the end they have to resort back to games to make up the ground

At least the PS4 came out swinging as a games system first, and i think the impact that had has been underestimated by a lot of people

 

[chithanh]

Is the XBO really "struggling"? Are their current XBO sales numbers really so far off the mark from expectations based on the 360?

I think it is quite safe to say that XB1 fell short of Microsoft's (and others') expectations.

EA for example said the following when questioned about the business reasons behind Titanfall exclusivity (emphasis mine):

I think you should assume that we made that decision when it was back a few years ago when we decided to go exclusive [...] We had some forecast at that time from where we thought both Xbox and PlayStation would be and that's what we based our decision on. I think we're still feeling very comfortable with that,

http://www.gamezone.com/news/titanf...aystation-sales-forecast-not-xbox-one-s-cloud
Of course there are a lot of corporate weasel words here, but this is as close as you can get to EA admitting that they had it wrong.

Then we have Yusuf Mehdi famously claiming that sales opportunities (total market shared between next-gen consoles) for Xbox One "go from 400 million to potentially upwards of a billion units". I don't think he had in mind getting only crumbs of those 400 million, because Microsoft said that they wanted [thread=717557]40% of the German market[/thread] for instance. The reality is that they are not even close to 40% even if you cut out Wii U (160k as of September 2013) from the picture:

Germany (through June):

Hardware LTDs:
PS4: 540,000
XB1: 170,000

Or is it more that the PS4 is looking more like PS2 and it has everyone losing their shit?

That too. Both PS4 is doing better than expected and XB1 is doing worse than expected.