It wasn't four years (end of 2012-end of 2016) of healthy support.
As I said, it wasn't four years (end of 2012 to end of 2016) of healthy support. Wii U was abandoned years before Switch launched (early 2017). It was supported for two years at best.
Even Nintendo Life had absolutely nothing interesting to talk about for two years! It was full of fluff. There were jokes about it.
Wii U had absolutely nothing more than a few mediocre games before Switch launched such as Paper Mario Colour Splash and Mario Tennis Ultra Smash and Breath of the Wild was delayed one year while they were developing the Switch port, confirmed by Nintendo.
Switch is not a good example, it wouldn't have had a launch game if it wasn't for the Wii U port unless you count 1-2-Switch as "game" and it would have had many months of drought, even more than it currently does, if it wasn't for the Wii U ports.
If the buzz was enough, Sony wouldn't have waited for Microsoft to reveal the console, specifications and now price and they wouldn't do things such as this report suggests:
Internet buzz means nothing. Zeus, I even read the same people everywhere: on any gaming site that I randomly visit, on Twitter... There's buzz surrounding Xbox. We are less than 1% of the gaming population.
@Ralizah WiiU was dead by year 2, and Nintendo signaling they were moving away from it signaled a sales halt. Even if they wanted to revive it they couldn't after that. Same with Sony/MS signaling moving away from 4/One....sales on current hardware slowed massively (GameStop had to rely on that for shareholders meetings to explain the downturn for 2 years.. .)
There's a massive disconnect between internet nerds and the real mass market meat and potatoes of these consoles. PS4 wasn't a resounding success because of the people drooling over Persona, Bloodborne, and Senran Kagura. It was a success because of the endless volume of people that picked up "a cheap console" at their nearest warehouse market to play the latest CoD/FIFA/etc. on. Buzz really doesn't matter. If buzz mattered X1X and PS4 Pro would be decimating PS4 and X1S sales. But neither company even dreamed of that being the case. It was always for the limtied market premium crowd and the S/4 was the main model. The low price of entry is what wins sales. Yes positive buzz is needed and negative buzz is harmful. But when you show someone a $300 next gen console and a $500 next gen console and say "but that one is better-er" the mass market is going to grab the $300 and never look back.
If Sony hits $400 for digital.....that's important, but I'm not sure if it's good enough. The digital casual market is going to go for the $300 box that's mostly the same thing but cheaper. The digital enthusiast market is going to scrutinize more and go Playstation or SeX. The physical crowd will have that 500/500 price split and can be swayed either way, probably leaning toward PS, but only somewhat. The sony loyal internet nerds and multiplat gamers will go for it.
But the hiccup is that casual market is PS's meat and potatoes way more than MS's....and MS stole that market away at $300. To win, PS must emphasize physical. That means being a compelling value on the disc model. That means cutting lower than $500. Not sure if they can do that. But if they do that, to make digital (and therefore the transition to Sony as a monopoly retailer...which is important to them) a compelling offer that also has to be cutting lower than $400. I don't think they can do that. Not with that insanely overbuilt I/O. They could...but do the numbers add up? If they do it, I'm buying 2 day 1. But I don't know if they can, and I find it unlikely. Series S seems innocent at first glance, but its positioning really throws a wrench in Sony's model. It guns right at their base market in a way they don't have any real counter-ammunition without eating their own lunch. If we pit X and 4 disc against each other at $500, it's clear PS4 wins. But that's not even the main market in the actual marketplace. That's the premium market the internet nerds are interested in. If Sony can't compete at the entry level, then they're going to have to compete as being the entry level in the physical disc console space to gain the dominance they're used to. They can do that. But it's going to mess with their plans. If they price match only, for disc, they're going to "lead" but not by significant margins, while also losing the mass market entry level entirely. I still see they could make that up late in the gen with the array of exclusives and a cost-cut slim, quite easily. But do they really want to "lose" for the first half of the gen this time? It's interesting. MS rescued this bland console generation from boredom and made it interesting again!
Well I'm almost definitely going to upgrade close to launch now. I was looking around for digital game deals, and a whole load of my favourite Xbox games (and games I'd want to play upgraded on next-gen like Witcher 3) were available for good prices digitally, so I've already bought like 5 new digital games, and I'm gonna put my retail versions up on ebay. Then I'm probably gonna sell my One S some time in the next month.
That's all unless Playstation come out with some kind of industry changing deal with their consoles. Which I seriously doubt!
Can't say no to a sackboy keychain, right? They did say what they're offering is value. And what's more valuable than a $300 next gen console that does 1440p than a $500 next gen console that does 4k and comes with a sackboy keychain? Series X doesn't offer that, does it? Does it? (seriously, our lawyers need to know because we already printed the ad copy.)
@NEStalgia If the casual market was all that mattered, Microsoft's SportsTVSportsTV strategy with the One would have been a resounding success. Casual purchasers might end up mattering the most when it comes to raw numbers, but you NEED those enthusiasts to come out early and strong for your device. Enthusiasts adopt. Positive buzz is generated. More people adopt. Eventually, your platforms has sales momentum, which draws in casuals, who tend to buy whatever it is their friends are playing on. To get that ball rolling, you need the enthusiast crowd.
That doesn't mean, of course, that price and specs aren't important as well. Price is arguably the single most important factor in the success of any console, but it's not enough on its own. The Wii U wasn't expensive, and it sold terribly. I bought the thing from Nintendo for $200 in 2014, even. They were desperate to sell it, and they just couldn't move units.
Playstation's strong brand awareness and engagement gives them an early and substantial advantage. Even with the Series S' pricing, it's their game to lose at this point. Especially considers PS5 will have a big day one exclusive (Miles Morales) that appeals to the mainstream. I'm personally a lot more interested in The Medium, but I don't expect that most people will share this sentiment.
They'll be fine. They crawled their way back from failure to the point where their least successful home console outsold Microsoft's most successful home console, and their early moves this gen indicate an aggressive competitive spirit. They know they can't win this time by relying on the competition to trip on their own shoelaces again.
@Ralizah If Microsoft sold the One cheaper than PS4 and didn't say up-front "we're charging you for used games and watching you through our camera, and you need high end internet in America in 2013" it would have been a resounding success on the SportsTVSportsTV strategy.
As it was it was a more expensive box that the rumble (from the media!!) was about it being spyware, anti-consumer, no sharing, and eventually also about it being weaker. It didn't fail because of SportsTVSportsTV. It failed in spite of that.
Among the internet nerds, Sony was 51% of the way to Greatness pre-show E3 with the 'this is how you share" video. They got 90% of the way there when they said $399.99. I dropped the presentation and ran to preorder at that precise moment and got 2 preorders in at 2 stores. The mass market combined the internet rumbling of "XBox is a meme" and "PS4 is awesome" compared priced tags, and there wasn't much decision to be made.
If "XBox was a meme" and was $299.99 things would have been different and PS4 would not have been the casual market champion.
This time XBox is not a meme, and is $299.99. With positive internet buzz for those consumers to search. That's a very different scenario. Of course for those that want used games/sharing, that might still be a dead even $500 battle, but it won't be quite so lopsided which way to go this time. Slightly winning the $500 battle but heavily losing the budget market still devastates their total install base.
Take a look at attach rates from when they report them. Does that look like a massive casual install base, or a massive core install base to you? I don't mean to say they don't have tons of core players that buy tons of games. I mean a lot of that huge install base consists of casuals that buy few games. So much of it that even the heavy buyers can't fully offset those "one game sales" customers. Because that is, and always has been a massive chunk of their market. And that is because they're always cheapest (except PS3 most of the gen.)
I don't disagree with enthusiasts adopting and positive buzz, of course. But the point is this time BOTH brands will have early adopting enthusiasts, and BOTH have that positive buzz. It's not like last time where the only XBox buzz was negative and how PS4 saved gaming from MS/EA's evil vision. And conversely even great positive buzz can't save a price/value failure. Even WiiU sold out at launch and hit great numbers with enthusiasts. It was every month after that that was a disaster.
I agree if both disc consoles come in at $500, PS probably has a reasonable advantage ( I wouldn't say substantial) specifically for the disc focused market. The question, then, is how much of the market is or isn't disc focused at this point in time. And with XB having a strong internet buzz on performance, and X benefiting somewhat from the very positive buzz around S (and Game Pass), I don't think that advantage is as unconditional as it was last time. And losing that massive install base for the casual users hurts them in other ways, including subscriptions.
They'll be "fine" but they want to lead. The question is do they want to lead badly enough they're willing to cut the $500 price tag, and also cut the digital price tag by association? Will the cut the $500 price tag but leave the digital version to hang as a terrible value at too close a price next to it? Will they cut deep on digital and leave the $500 price tag and try to enter the low price war? That's where it gets interesting. I think PS "fans" tend to overthink their brand advantage. Yeah, PS has Miles Morales, but XBox can advertise Sports Sports Sports - Mobile xbox - all for $15/mo! Cyberpunk running at best console specs! For the mainstream that's not irrelevant.
And seriously, that whole PS3 outsold 360 meme is about as hardcore PS fanboy as one can possibly go. It's corporate spin designed to be impressive, while being factual, but not being intellectually honest. It's such a completely useless metric. They "outsold" the competition after the competition discontinued the product it was competing against, only after they repackaged it as an ultra-budget low cost product, after its generation was done. And even that only sold because unlike the XBone, PS4 was not backward compatible with the PS3 exclusives, so that bargain basement model was a cheap way for anyone who didn't actually want to pay for a PS3 to play those exclusives, meanwhile XBOne was building in that backward compatibility for exclusives. You'd almost have to combine 360 and One sales to compare against the PS3 sales once the new consoles were out, as One offered a path to play the Gen 7 exclusives, while 4 did not and you had to buy the plastic box. But it doesn't mean it drove additional sales. That's not "clawing their way back", that's attrition, and not very profitable attrition. You couldn't even compare the same data if 1S stayed on shelves for years at $150 and ended up not outselling PS4, because there's incentive for anyone to skip one and go right to Series, since it plays all the same games. Something that wasn't true for PS4.
It's a silly metric that sounds good in corporate speak but doesn't really say a think about what that really meant for the company's analysts. PS3 undersold. PS3 Mini added to some generational unit sales at a minimum profit. It's about as good as MS listing their subscribers without reporting console sales.
We can talk about a PS brand advantage all we want, but at the end of the day when all the FIFA sales go to Series S, Sony isn't going to be very thrilled looking at significantly lower unit sales figures, which is what they've been hanging their hats on. Even if they don't challenge that price and stick to their guns, you can bet your bottom dollar they're scrambling at this moment trying to figure out how/if they could.
Digital Foundry said they don't think the Series S will automatically work with the Xbox One X enhanced patches, given the difference in the graphics cards and memory. So either they'll have to build in a new enhancement for the Series S, or it'll just default back to regular backwards compatibility.
Feels like they should be able to at least manage 1080p or 1440p resolution for old 720p 360 games, so I hope they announce something.
@Dezzy yeah, i still think it's kind of weird that the XSeS actually downgrades BC versus X1X.... Granted, it's also cheaper than X1X was... It's not very next gen for a 1x owner when it does bc worse then the last gen machine...
But i can't imagine it won't get upgrades. It sounds like that pseudo hdr thing maay work on S?
@Ralizah You and many other people are putting too much faith into that Miles Morales game that "big" PS5 exclusive(lmao). He's a decent character that had a movie that was moderately successful, the lowest one(box office wise) in the spiderman movie list. So I refuse to believe casuals/consumers will flock to the PS5 just for this game when those same casuals weren't there when Into the Spiderverse came out.
The Harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. When the going gets tough, the tough gets going.
I'm currently playing Red Dead Redemption 1 & Fatal Frame Maiden of Black Water
They say higher resolutions and framerates are being worked on for "select games". I just hope that ends up being quite a long list! There are so many 360 games I would appreciate higher resolution, and so many Xbox One games where I'd appreciate 60fps.
I think given how much emphasis they've put on this as being a major selling point for the platform, they won't disappoint us! It really does distinguish them from their competition.
@Dezzy Yeah, i agree. Their bc and Sony's refusal to take it seriously it's probably the biggest differentiator. And and XSeS is going to be their biggest install base probably 2:1 or more, so I'm sure they'll be spending a lot of attention on making it shine.
Seems mostly so, @Anti-Matter .... For the sensor accessory, you'd want to ensure it's the same region as the console, if you're getting that separately Some places are NTSC & others are PAL! Then, some games seem to be region free but it's not clear how you'd tell which & others aren't
@MsJubilee Into the Spider-Verse had a distinct art style and that equals kids-movie. I mean, I'd believe some people think like this. It definitely wasn't the big blockbuster movie like other Spider-Man films.
I think they mostly see Spider-Man on the box and buy it like they did with the PS4 game. Even if it's half as successful, that's still very good I think. I don't think they really care if it's Peter Parker or Miles Morales.
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