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PS3 made it's lack of sales in NA and US up with mostly sales in mainland EU and JP of course. Different territories, different priorities. I'm not saying brandpower alone is the reason, but a combination of things. Still, PS4 is marketed as a must have "lifestyle" product like an iphone and is pretty popular with kids and teens too. I think Sony willingly and also randomly nailed the "playstation" phrase and that's why it's selling so much. As conservative as the console is, Sony managed to differenciate it from the competition with clever design and marketing and with help of the word of mouth.

Still a very mediocre performance, if you consider the price, launchdate, games library, great online. In all keymarkets, 360 performed better than the original xbox but was nowhere as close to Sony. I'm talking about Germany, France, Italy and Spain. And do not underestimate Sonys efforts in the last few years with PS3 and their support with exclusives, they struggled but maintained the brandpower, and we will never now how 360 performed if it hasn't been for the stop in brand and portfolio development.

Regarding the bolded sentence, that is incorrect.

Whenn Sony was partnered with Nintendo to make a CD attachment for the SNES, that attachment was going to be called Play Station. Obviously, Nintendo publicly burned Sony on that collaborative effort and Sony was pissed off enough to enter the videogames industry with a vengeance.

http://www.edge-online.com/features/making-playstation/

 

[secondspace]

They forced everyone to buy a Kinect at launch, but still haven't shown us a must have game for it. It looked great for MS to sell advertising though. They announced DRM policies that were great for publishers, but never convinced customers what the benefit to them was.

The internal hardware was obviously a problem, but MS would still be on the back foot with hardware that was more powerful than the PS4.

 

[Shin-Ra]

 

[Insane Metal]

I disagree with the text. Better hardware never had any relation with the best selling console. It was a series of bad decisions.

 

[Jack cw]

Regarding the bolded sentence, that is incorrect.

Whenn Sony was partnered with Nintendo to make a CD attachment for the SNES, that attachment was going to be called Play Station. Obviously, Nintendo publicly burned Sony on that collaborative effort and Sony was pissed off enough to enter the videogames industry with a vengeance.

http://www.edge-online.com/features/making-playstation/

Regardless of the history, I meant that PS4 as a system is basically what a modern console needs to be a "playstation".

 

[Bgamer90]

Weak hardware hurts, but the PS2 also had week hardware, and so did the Wii.

Yep, and at the time (2001) I didn't care even though I knew the Xbox and GameCube would be more powerful. PS2 simply had more games I was interested in and it being a huge improvement over my last gen console (PS1) was enough for me in terms of power. Got the Xbox One first over the PS4 for pretty much the same exact reasons.

The greatest specs aren't that important in terms of the mainstream audience. Xbox One's problems came from the terrible/confusing PR and it not having an SKU that was the same price or cheaper than the PS4 at launch. I'm positive that the Xbox One would currently be the top selling console in North America right now if it weren't for those two things.; PS4 would have been on top worldwide either way though (it's part of the more popular brand worldwide as I've said before).

 

[Percy]

I'll have whatever you're drinking.

Not to shit on the Wii U, but that claim is just absurd.. If the Wii U outsells the XBO / PS4, I'll literally call my firstborn Satoru

Haha... you misunderstand, friend, I wasn't talking about sales (I know Wii U will likely sit around where it is for the remainder of the gen on that score), I was talking about how the eventual game libraries of those three consoles will eventually shape up imo. Possibly I'm exaggerating a tad, but at this moment in time I'm having trouble seeing anything on PS4/XB1 topping stuff like SM3DW, MK8, Bayonetta 2 and such. Admittedly, I wasn't thinking of multiplats at all for any of them though.

Will readily hold my hands up if proven wrong eventually though

 

[eso76]

for its 'technical struggles' yeah.
Actually i would trace it further back, when MS decided they wanted a multi purpose living room entertainment thing, which demanded "a lot of ram" (while not making the system much more desireable at all)
That suggested MS to go for the cheaper DDR3. Unfortunately, in the end that didn't make the console much cheaper at all because they had to design the system around this limitation (edram).

Sony gambled on a lower amount of faster and more expensive RAM, which by the time the console went into production had become cheap enough they could afford to double.

As for the commercial struggles, being behind the PS4 doesn't mean they're having troubles. The system is probably going to be profitable in the end, i don't think being first or second really matters.

 

[Brerlappin]

In the end the platform with the best games will win just as it has been for every past generation, a shiny turd is still a turd.

Really? Cause the Dreamcast lineup shit all over the Ps2 at first, and we all know how that race ended

 

[Bgamer90]

I think this article hit the key point.

Xbox One was in the trouble when IW announced that Ghost was 1080p on PS4 and 720p on Xbox One. Since the resolution-gate was open last year, Xbox One started to fail in the consumers' mind.

Just imaging you go to mediamarkt to buy a console, and the employee tells you that PS4 games are 1080p and Xbox One games are 900p, what choice will you make even you just have small knowledge of resolution?

Didn't seem to matter for North America (where the Xbox brand is probably the most relevant in comparison to many other countries). Ghosts did slightly better on the Xbox One than the PS4. A bit soon to say but I wouldn't be surprised if the same will be true for AW. The brand is still viewed by many alongside Xbox, though definitely not as much as it was last gen.

 

[Sakujou]

stupid reasoning. and no they arent right.

its the fault of ms, its the fault of the countermovement of the sony fanboys and of course the fail of selling kinect in a good way if there arent any games around.

all this together is the result.

i dont know how much ms/sony spends on marketing but it has to be huge lot.

 

[stryke]

Isn't that Call of Duty Ghosts?

You remember that, when Ghosts first launched on PS4, the campaign only ran at 720p like on Xbox One, right? Some sites made comparisons between the two with people noting that it looked identical. It was entirely due to this fault. Once patched, however, the PS4 version is 1080p across the board.

IGN made a new video with the correct resolutions soon after the kerfuffle happened.

 

[cartoon_soldier]

The RAM? That's their reason? Do they even understand how computers work? Even just if I were to agree that Microsoft's problems are hardware related (which I don't) - it would be because of the GPU (which has a huge effect on games) and not the RAM (which has a much smaller effect)

The esRAM takes up die space that would have allowed MS to use the same GPU too.

What basically happened here is:

MS was late to XB1 design, Sony had started early and beat them to the punch. This was evident from past articles and just the overall XB1 launch.

When the design did start (by MS), expectation was for Sony to go with 2-4 GB DDR5 RAM since it was expensive and supply constrained at that time.

MS decided they will keep the 360 design and go with ESRAM and 8GB DDR3.

By the time final year came around, DDR5 prices went down as manufacturing capabilities increased and you also saw them being used much more widely. So, Sony was able to not just meet their original goal of 4GB DDR5 first but even increase it to 8GB DDR5.

While MS had already designed the console in a way to make it impossible for them to make any such changes.

If the console still had their original specs we would have had:
Sony PS4 with 4GB DDR5, better GPU
MS with 8 GB DDR3, 32mb esRAM, worse GPU

What would that look like, I got no clue.

MS's decision to play it safe (by keeping same design as 360) and market direction changing helped Sony a lot.

 

[mrklaw]

MS were always going to be up against things (outside of US/UK), simply by Sony releasing at the same time as them. They didn't have 12-18 months to themselves.


- PS4 released at the same time

- $100 cheaper PS4

- more powerful PS4

- 'we support used games' at E3 kicked them in the balls

- 'you think you can just flip a switch'?

 

[amardilo]

I would say it was more a case of RAM and GPU.

I got both consoles around lunch but buy most of my games on PS4 as I tend to get a game that is slightly better (in terms of graphics, resolutions and/or frame rate) for the same price. It would be interesting to see if MS is losing much money from software sales.

 

[WeAreStarStuff]

Man if MS had thrown out kinect and all of the TV functionality and built a $500 powerhouse (relatively) I would have been a two console owner this generation. Such a wasted opportunity there.

 

[JimiNutz]

The lack of power is definitely holding them back.

If Xbox One was as powerful as PS4 (or more powerful) I think it would have easily won US and UK again this gen. The bad publicity from their initial policies was easily forgotten by the masses one they were reversed (I know some on here don't forget so easily, but the average public soon forgot). The initial high price point and Kinect were also easy to reverse and were both done pretty swiftly.

The lack of power is something that they can't negate as easily and it seems to still be costing them.

 

[th4tguy]

I'm really not sure memory is the reason they aren't selling more than Sony. You ask any consumer why they chose a PS4 over an Xbox One and they aren't going to tell you it's because they have faster memory. Maybe if it was more memory.

What they will say are things like:
"It's more powerful"
"It's cheaper"
"It's what my friends bought"
"It's smaller"
"It has the games I want to play"

Momentum is a hard thing to stop once it gets rolling. Sony and MS built up a lot of hype prior to announcing their systems. Sony delivered a message gamers wanted to hear. MS didn't. It killed their momentum and they have struggled since.

 

[inki]

What, so nothing to do with the PS4's GPU being 40-50% more powerful? Yes, the difference in RAM has some effect, but whomever wrote this article should probably realise that probably the bigger contributing factor for the PS4 being effectively more powerful... is by having a GPU effectively 40-50% more powerful. Not faster RAM. Faster RAM doesn't give us more processing power.

You can't just blame all the power woes on RAM and ignore the GPU. And given GPU wasn't mentioned once, I'm not sure whoever wrote this is entirely sure what effect RAM speed actually has in a gaming machine.

They are saying that had MS gone with the same DDR5 they wouldn't have used the eSRAM to make up the difference which would have allowed them to have more room on the die so they would have opted to have the same GPU power (18 CUs, two geometry engines and 32 ROPs, respectfully). Then the machines would have been nearly identical.

 

[c0de]

The esRAM takes up die space that would have allowed MS to use the same GPU too.

If the console still had their original specs we would have had:
Sony PS4 with 4GB DDR5, better GPU
MS with 8 GB DDR3, 32mb esRAM, worse GPU

Indeed. Especially considering that the new operating systems seem quite demanding while we know that both Sony and MS played safe here, for sure. But 512 MB would've been pretty much a given for Sony's OS so that would mean 3,5 GDDR5 on PS4 and 5GB DDR3 on MS' side.
My guess is that early gen games wouldn't struggle that much (actually you never can have "enough" ram but devs are used to squeeze stuff in RAM) but later I guess this would've been a huge bottleneck for PS4.

 

[Bgamer90]

I'm really not sure memory is the reason they aren't selling more than Sony. You ask any consumer why they chose a PS4 over an Xbox One and they aren't going to tell you it's because they have faster memory. Maybe if it was more memory.

What they will say are things like:
"It's more powerful"
"It's cheaper"
"It's what my friends bought"
"It's smaller"
"It has the games I want to play"

Momentum is a hard thing to stop once it gets rolling. Sony and MS built up a lot of hype prior to announcing their systems. Sony delivered a message gamers wanted to hear. MS didn't. It killed their momentum and they have struggled since.

I really don't think that many will talk about the size of the device. PS4 would still be a hot item even if the sizes of the consoles were switched.

 

[Phrozenflame500]

I still really feel the price was the major factor. Mind you, that was compounded by the weaker console ("It's more powerful AND cheaper?!" - the average customer), but assuming both consoles were equally powerful and launched at the same price level I still feel the PS4 would have pulled ahead.

I actually don't think the initial DRM policies and 180 had as much of an effect as people say it is. It was certainly awful PR, but only the most militant would have strayed away from buying it solely for that reason.

 

[U n i o n 0015]

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.

Yep. Rumor + $100 price difference = lots of enthusiasts opted for PS4 over the One. Not really a single decision that did it...

 

[th4tguy]

I really don't think that many will talk about the size of the device. PS4 would still be a hot item even if the sizes of the consoles were switched.

I agree, it's not a major selling point. But to your point, I still think it would come up more than "faster memory"

 

[Bgamer90]

I actually don't think the initial DRM policies and 180 had as much of an effect as people say it is. It was certainly awful PR, but only the most militant would have strayed away from buying it solely for that reason.

I'll just say this, they wouldn't have changed DRM so many months before the system's launch if it wasn't the biggest problem when it came to perception (at the time).

 

[ukpanik]

I think it's more to do with the personnel. The sleazy car salesmen tactics. The bullshit and lies.

 

[publicpwnerer]

Haha... you misunderstand, friend, I wasn't talking about sales (I know Wii U will likely sit around where it is for the remainder of the gen on that score), I was talking about how the eventual game libraries of those three consoles will eventually shape up imo. Possibly I'm exaggerating a tad, but at this moment in time I'm having trouble seeing anything on PS4/XB1 topping stuff like SM3DW, MK8, Bayonetta 2 and such. Admittedly, I wasn't thinking of multiplats at all for any of them though.

Will readily hold my hands up if proven wrong eventually though

Ahhh. My bad. I agree that Ninty's first party lineup is incredible. But when I look at this month (November), the Wii U misses out on every solid AAA third party, which is a big shame. The problem is, if there's a 2-3 Nintendo games you don't particularly like, that's almost one and a half quarters for games you're missing out on for the Wii U.



@ Article / thread. I think there's multiple bad decisions. Being underpowered is inexcusable, especially when it came at the cost of the Kinect..which was not only forced upon people, but overcharging for it. Outside of first party, the PS4 is underpowered too imo.

I personally think GPU manufacturers are to blame. They've been holding back for far too long, with incredibly weak iterations for absurd prices.

 

[th4tguy]

I still think it was the price/ power ratio.

Even the most casual consumer isn't going to feel good about buying a less powerful/ more expensive system. Kinect really hurt those initial sales because it jacked up the price by $100.

If the system had launched at $350 we'd all be talking about what Sony did wrong, not MS.

 

[joey_bone_bomb]

The esRAM takes up die space that would have allowed MS to use the same GPU too.

What basically happened here is:

MS was late to XB1 design, Sony had started early and beat them to the punch. This was evident from past articles and just the overall XB1 launch.

When the design did start (by MS), expectation was for Sony to go with 2-4 GB DDR5 RAM since it was expensive and supply constrained at that time.

MS decided they will keep the 360 design and go with ESRAM and 8GB DDR3.

By the time final year came around, DDR5 prices went down as manufacturing capabilities increased and you also saw them being used much more widely. So, Sony was able to not just meet their original goal of 4GB DDR5 first but even increase it to 8GB DDR5.

While MS had already designed the console in a way to make it impossible for them to make any such changes.

If the console still had their original specs we would have had:
Sony PS4 with 4GB DDR5, better GPU
MS with 8 GB DDR3, 32mb esRAM, worse GPU

What would that look like, I got no clue.

MS's decision to play it safe (by keeping same design as 360) and market direction changing helped Sony a lot.

GDDR5 /= DDR5
Something also "Techspot" (lol) overlooks btw

 

[plasmawave]

How are you going to exhibit differences in resolution when you don't even provide them in full resolution.

And no, I don't really agree with their reasoning the blame lies solely on the power differential.

GDDR5 made that watch possible on the PS4, gais!

 

[Servbot24]

In the end the platform with the best games will win just as it has been for every past generation, a shiny turd is still a turd.

This hasn't happened since PS1.

 

[Spirit Icana]

In the end the platform with the best games will win just as it has been for every past generation, a shiny turd is still a turd.

Completely agree.

We still got a couple more years to go for this current gen. Anything can happen.

 

[USC-fan]

Kinect is the major problem. They put so much r&d into the new kinect its insane. Over a BILLION dollar just on the shape chip that handle processing for kinect in the console itself. Who knows how much more for the sensor itself.

I believe its the main reason we have an underpowered and over price system today. I wouldnt be surprised to find the xbone without kinect still cost more to produce than ps4.

 

[Nabbis]

Eh... Id wager that this time Microsoft is simply worse in almost every category than Sony.

Last time Microsoft had the upper hand during launch, but they fucked up with copy-pasting
US centric marketing tactics for EU, subscription based multiplayer, bad first-party nurturing and a lack of something like PS+. Microsoft has not done any evolving in regards to these issues... But now they also lost the hardware advantage for multiplats in a way that overshadows the former advantage they had over PS3.

Granted, Sony went in on the subscription train, but PS+ still provides far more value than the alternative. The only thing MS does objectively better right now is internet infrastructure.

 

[EGM1966]

I agree the big issue was power to price I disagree you can simply pin it on the memory, although that didn't help of course.

As I see it the issue was the sum total of the impact of the goal of having an entertainment hub. This resulted in a design that had to accommodate HDMI in, enough memory to support a triple OS designed not just to support games with some media but provide an integrated gaming/media experience and include Kinect and achieve a certain cost price and associated retail price.

This drove need to make the decision for memory when they did and design when they did.

Sony went after a box designed primarily for gaming with media and other aspects being "on the side" as extras rather than a single cohesive package. Not only did this play better in terms of cost/power but it actually turned out to be more in line with general market preference (ability to fire up say BBC iPlayer here in UK vs Xbox trying to overlay everything in a unified manner).

 

[3rdamention]

Yet, in any Faceoff or Resolution thread, people argue how graphics and resolution dont matter, only to some people on GAF. If that is truly the case, the RAM difference shouldn't matter since the Xbox One is getting the same games, just at lower resolutions.




I completely disagree with this article. The policies around the Xbox One at its reveal are the reason that it is getting nearly doubled up worldwide. Remember how upset people were, the hate being spewed online? The DRM/No Used Games, 24 hour hours checks online,TVTVTV etc. etc. Then, to say that gamers weren't ready for their vision of the future, so they reversed them, REALLY got people fired up.


There were so many people saying they would never support Microsoft, never buy and Xbox again, and that was before it was ever even released to the market. Sure, some of it was hyperbole, but I feel pretty confident that there are people out there that will admit they haven't bought an Xbox One simply because of the reveal, and then the arrogance afterward. You didn't hear as many people saying "I will not support the Xbox One because of their choice of RAM!"



I would say right behind that would be the price difference. That also played a pretty large role, but in my opinion, not as much as the whole reveal.

 

[Zophar]

Microsoft vastly overestimated the strength of the Xbox brand and tried to bite the hand that feeds it, simple as that. It was all of the anti-consumer lead-up to its actual release that sealed its fate. Resolution-gate, the botched launch, the half-baked reversals were all just comeuppance, really. To this day it was Microsoft's brazen unwillingness to respect its consumers that keeps me from buying an Xbone, personally, and I don't expect that to change for the duration of this generation. I strongly doubt I'm alone in that, either.

 

[Shabad]

I can't believe how the number of flawed point this article is making... I for one believe their struggle comes from several different factors :
- the hardware indeed, but not only the memory - the GPU is significantly less powerful too, and this probably account for most of the difference we witness in third party titles. Every single third party release, and the comparison articles that follow, was a little hit to Xbox One's reputation
- wrong and allegedly bad initial presentation, terrible PR during the pre-launch phase, and lack of direction confusing the public. Microsoft's multiple 180° became a running joke, and certainly didn't garnered public confidence in the brand.
- Microsoft's lack of support in the dying years of the Xbox 360, and the accelerated death of the OG Xbox, compared to the amazing output of Sony's first party in those years, is imo a key aspect.
- Lack of exclusives software. I understand this may be a controversial point, but as a PC owner, I have found that way too many Xbox exclusive actually ends up on PC at some point. This is may be a small effect, but it's the reason I still don't have an Xbox One for example.
- 500€ VS 400€. It's gotta be the biggest factor here. Microsoft changed that, but they lost the dynamic and momentum by launching with this price tag.

 

[REMEMBER CITADEL]

This article is full of it, DRM and the price did way more harm then the ram, the power difference is real and a factor in the sales gap, but everyone I know, knew about DRM due to twitter, and everyone saw the 500 vs 400 at launch, very few knew about the power difference. Being extremely NA focused did not help either.

Yes, he is just plain wrong.

 

[Bgamer90]

I agree, it's not a major selling point. But to your point, I still think it would come up more than "faster memory"

Ehh. Maybe. I think it's possible for it to work both ways. The Original Xbox was large but many people viewed it as being that way due to it being more powerful. GameCube was always viewed as more of a toy; "kiddie games" plus really small size.

I think branding impacts the way people look at the size of these consoles more than the actual size of the consoles.

_______________

I still think it was the price/ power ratio.

Even the most casual consumer isn't going to feel good about buying a less powerful/ more expensive system. Kinect really hurt those initial sales because it jacked up the price by $100.

If the system had launched at $350 we'd all be talking about what Sony did wrong, not MS.

Price definitely played a big role -- though mostly in the areas in which the Xbox brand was more popular. The PS4 would still dominate the Xbox One in many countries outside of America even if it was cheaper at launch.

Like I said before, I definitely think the Xbox One would be #1 in North American sales right now if it had an SKU that was the same price or cheaper than the PS4 at launch. Many people are buying these consoles simply for the new gen multiplats. Why would someone get the more expensive console outside of maybe a huge preference in controller and/or online service if multiplats are all they cared about?

 

[TheLaughingStock]

They failed at selling early adopters on the vision and there was no head start. And when Sony is on their A game it's virtually impossible to compete (considering PS3 turnaround). I don't see how they can be beaten without screwing up given past history for PS brand.

 

[Durante]

Theoretically, if the XB1 had used GDDR5 and used the freed-up die space for the GPU, would the two consoles have been almost the same both in terms of architecture and performance?

AMD could have sold the same SoC twice.

 

[intheinbetween]

Really? Cause the Dreamcast lineup shit all over the Ps2 at first, and we all know how that race ended

not really, for example were was EA support back then? many developers and publishers didn't want to invest in DC because of its installed base, just the opposite from XB1

I find that article pretty useless. it's no news XB1 is weaker than PS4, but, underpowered? it seems like XB1 don't have a chance and MS should just quit

 

[Green Yoshi]

The Xbox One is so big, they could have chosen a CPU by Intel and a GPU by Nvidia as they did with the original Xbox. Then 1080p and 60 fps would be no problem for most games.

 

[Caayn]

AMD could have sold the same SoC twice.

Now that would've been interesting to see.

The Xbox One is so big, they could have chosen a CPU by Intel and a GPU by Nvidia as they did with the original Xbox. Then 1080p and 60 fps would be no problem for most games.

Brand alone doesn't say much about power. They could've easily made a stronger box with just AMD hardware.

 

[shadowsdarknes]

The console war does not exist.

Yes it does.

 

[Dragon1893]

Can you imagine if Microsoft had just opted for DDR5 memory? The Xbox One and the Playstation 4 would have the same exact hardware. 

lol

 

[LoveCake]

Last gen i had both PS3 & X360 & i much preferred the X360 in fact i loved it, i just never got on with my PS3 & it was just for exclusives basically.

This gen though i went with the PS4 & the reason was not the specs, it was the DRM & price with Kinect that put me off, i have the original Kinect & imo it's a waste of time & money, the spec has little to do with it as i had already got a WiiU before the PS4 or X1 had been released.

 

[knitoe]

I still think it was the price/ power ratio.

Even the most casual consumer isn't going to feel good about buying a less powerful/ more expensive system. Kinect really hurt those initial sales because it jacked up the price by $100.

If the system had launched at $350 we'd all be talking about what Sony did wrong, not MS.

$50 isn't a big enough deal to compensate for power difference. The PS4 would still have the "better" 3rd party games. Except for the Wii due to waggle (game style over graphics), every console with the "better" 3rd party support has won every gen. Watch, you will see the PS4 beat the X1 this November and December even though the X1 will be $50 less.

 

[TheBanditKing]

I think their problems are far bigger then just RAM/GPU choices. The horrible reveal, the near unrecoverable E3 (tvtvtvtvtvtvtvtv lol) the horrendous DRM and Privacy invading Kinect concerns and then the final nail in the coffin (despite all the 180's) the price. All of that killed any hype that could have been generated, the graphical disparity between the two is just whats keeping it down, because its adding another controversy to the list. MS execs just made poor choices: software features over better hardware, still betting on a long since passed gimmick (Kinect/motion controls died with the Wii), interconnected media center over a games console, services over games/content.