Holy crap REMEMBER CITADEL is putting some overtime in..
Apart from the $100 price difference, I really can't see any significant resemblance. Saturn launched prematurely, on the heels of Genesis, SEGA CD and Saturn (the latter two both failures),
I'll guess you meant 32x not Saturn. And whe both the 32x and Sega CD were flops, neither really led a bad taste in the public' mouth. The Genesis was still wildly successful up to the release of the Saturn. Not as big as SNES, but that had more to do with Squaresoft than it did 32x or CD.
only amplifying the already existing confusion among consumers. I don't foresee any such confusion with Xbox One in regard to Xbox 360 and Kinect, both very successful and clearly defined products
Are you being serious here? MS had to release two week's worth of FAQs and interviews just to try and clear stuff up, only to have to then do another two weeks of interviews just to clear up the 180, and again the majority sentiment seems to be "what's stopping them from putting it back in?" A good portion of their predicament right now is directly from confusion!!
(now, the Wii/Wii U situation, on the other hand...). Saturn hardware was difficult to develop for; Xbox One, even if its development environment is currently not as mature as that of PS4, is supposed to be very easy to work with.
One word. eSRAM. Two if you want to include Kinect which no one yet has found a compelling core gaming use for yet. Neither a deal breaker, but neither elegant to implement either.
Saturn launched with only 6 games, practically Saturn's surprise US launch enraged retail partners, causing some to even stop carrying the system; Microsoft went out of their way to please the retailers even before the policy reversal.[
MS went out of their way for retail partners? "We are going to lock down physical copies except by some stores that we approve can do trades". Unless you were one I those touched stores I'm not guessing retailers were particularly thrilled with MS. Suggesting otherwise is being very optimistic.
Finally, whereas Saturn had nothing to justify the higher price point, Xbox One ships with additional hardware and accompanying features which offer functionality that is entirely (HDMI in) or partially (Kinect 2) absent from the competing platforms.
Ok. I get it. You actually weren't around for the launch. Now it's making a bit more sense.
Saturn DID justify the price point. $399 got you a current arcade port (which with the then current Sega arcade output was NOTHING to snicker at), two controllers, and 512Kb battery backed up ram. Meanwhile for $299 you got a PSX and controller. You still needed a game ($50), a 2nd controller ($30), and a memory card ($20). Look at that. $399. The problem was wonderful consumers went to the store and saw $299<$399 and that was enough for them.
The only valid point you have is the launch lineup. So the question is, is that enough to stop MS from repeating Sega's history. And that is precisely the question Edge is asking.