Jesus almost half of the ign audience is planning on getting an xbox??
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Why?
That’s pretty crazy how much this has changed
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Today, console sales are like 1/3 XBox, 2/3 PS4. The game revenue is approximately also inline with this (XBox revenue per player in a little higher, but this also because of the demography where XBox is most sold). Three/four years ago, Phil must have concluded that to increase revenue, MSFT must do this without necessarily selling more consoles. Hence, MSFT started to release games on PC/Steam. They have rapidly diversified to include console & PC, and bridging this with GPU. Having console also means 3rd party games are developed for console and MSFT get license fees.
Sony's market is primarily console. Most game sold on the platform is 3rd party and most of their revenue are from. It gives them very strong leverage with 3rd parties. We are seeing this relationship with exclusivity deals that they can get done. But, if their share reduce 20%, this will reduce their revenue significantly and leverage (cost for MSFT will also reduce). Just think back to how much money Sony lost with PS3. Now, I don't expect PlayStation to loose money, but 20+% revenue drop will be felt by whole of Sony.
We saw what the loss of market share (and even more importantly mindshare) did to Xbox this generation. First three/four years of gen 8, XBox had to squeeze hard, and only with XOX and later Phil becoming EVP, that gaming has become a core MSFT pillar.
I don't expect it to ever get this bad for PlayStation, but a 20% revenue drop will have significant effect for Sony to grow and invest. You want to invest by borrowing, not digging into your cash reserve or selling assets. Borrowing is already more expensive for Sony, just compare their credit rating to M/FAANG companies.
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I think its inevitable sony will lose some revenue from playstation next gen, for a start they are already taking a bigger loss on hardware and install base of PS5 will be lower because
- Xbox series is far far more competitive
- PC gaming is growing
- New threats from megacorp cloud gaming
- A strong a Nintendo.
They will still do very well but I expect 70-75million installbase by 2027.
There overall profit might be the same or better as this gen though, because of improved subscriptions sales.
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This is why I hope the Xbox Series sells at least 7.5 million if possible for every 10 million PS5s sold, because if say by 2025 there’s only around 50 million PS5s sold and around 38 million Xbox S/X then that makes it harder for Sony to get certain timed exclusives, I also don’t understand why they don’t consider the PC market for some of these deals.
I think the PS5 can be at at least 85 million by then, I think it will be a 100 million seller lifetime but won’t reach PS4 numbers.
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These are all very good points. Certainly, all early reaction and they way Series X has been revealed and XBox communication has been top notch, and we see that every where, even in forums where are strong PS support. I have not seen that much data on PC gaming market growth, so I would love to see that, but after long absence MSFT is making its presence felt and trying to drive this market again. Lot of this also has to do with where Windows is trying to place itself with growth in Cloud. I wish Cloud gaming was closer. Sadly, I don’t think any of the big three have found a sure way to making revenue (but today XBOX is best placed) from cloud gaming.
So, a 75M unit sold is 40M down. They are making bigger HW losses than gen 8 because of yield and power and N7, possibly $100+, and this will continue until N5 PS5. Game prices are increasing by $10 (~15%), and they will improve margin because retail margin will reduce with digital. But this is also dangerous. There is very little incentive for retailers to sale console when retail margin are better with disk games, so they will want better margin on HW sale. Anyway, Sony and MSFT know their math way better than I, but when you loose 40M users (and most of these could be their digital console owners), that would be major concern.
Xbox for sure is going to claw back a lot of people this gen. I can see Xbox clawing back a lot of the ex Xbox 360 fans that skipped Xbox One and went to PS4. I think if Halo was a launch that would be even more of the case. Just imagine buying Series X after skipping the entire Xbox One generation and having Game Pass with all the old games to play for the first time, maybe they are banking on this that’s why they delayed Halo.
Yea they need to get it looking great at release and its not like 343i can’t make a gorgeous looking game 4 and 5 look amazing for what they are
Yeah it looks like they just ran out of time, knew that it was just to soon for launch and decided to just delay. I feel like the game is actually closer than we think, I was in the late 2021 camp but if they only need to improve the visuals and maybe performance it shouldn’t be that much work 3-6 month should be enough imo.
Apparently they were hit very hard after us went into lockdown to the point that development nearly was at a stand still and devs have said games typically look ugly until the final stretch
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Yeah I can sorta vouch for this, I’ve done QA testing and some of the games I’ve tested have looked WAY worse than launch like a lot worse and some of the games were about 3-4 months before launch.
Yes every company does not want to reduce installbase, but at a reduced installbase they will still be very successful.
In 2023 cloud gaming will be more widespread, it will be on peoples TVs and other devices, I think quite a few of the casual fifa,cod,GTA players might just play via the cloud, I think the experience would be good enough for them.
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