Microsoft’s agressive strategy is why 360 sold so well, by the first 2 years it had Mass Effect, Bioshock, Lost Odyssey, Star Ocean, Blue dragon, Oblivion, Dead Rising, Lost Planet, Gears of War, FEAR, Test Drive Unlimited, Ace Combat 6, Eternal Sonata, and more im missing , all these were at least exlusive for 1 year and all these were from non first party studios.
On the Xbox One generation it had some stuff too, but on this one i can’t think of any fairly big game they paid for to be exclusive for 1 year at least, and first party wise there was just Forza Horizon 5 and a Halo that flopped.
I still think that if Xbox is just 2-3 millions behind after over 2 years with the big difference there’s been on exclusive games (either complete or temporal ones), it has good chances to surpass PS5 sometime in the future, but yea no chance it’ll do the near 2/1 ratio against PS it managed to do on the X360 generation.
Temporal exclusives do sell more consoles than Gamepass, and if even on a year where you only have Spiderman 2 announced, you still manage to have a Final Fantasy 16 and a Silent Hill Remake too from third parties, yes, you are going to do incredibly well.
As for what I brought up earlier about bad Xbox sales for the holidays, I don’t think it’s about exclusives at all and more about most people just not wanting the Series S at this current stage in the generation, always thought it would do great in the holidays mainly but at this point in time it’s clear most people want the big brother.
At least where I live in the US the Series X is really hard to get while you can walk into a store and buy a Series S very easily and even a PS5 these days and it’s something I’ve been noticing for a few months now.
I’ve noticed this in my local Best Buy and some other stores in the area and it’s probably something Microsoft needs to solve asap, sure I’m sure Series S’s would’ve sold out if they would’ve had a few AAA exclusives for the holidays but mainly because it would have been the only choice to play them on consoles due to how hard Series X is to get, still haven’t seen one in the wild yet.
These pics are from my Best Buy (where I originally purchased my Series X in 2020) thank God I did back them because who knows how long I would’ve waited if I didn’t get it at launch, I can order a PS5 or Series S and get it tomorrow but Series X is labeled as high demand product and it’s almost impossible to order one.
Digital PS5 and 499$ are out of stock though but in my experience they seem to be prioritizing the 559$ bundles.
Difference is PlayStation has Europe pretty much on locked besides the UK which is also a market where Xbox does really well, this is why they didn’t worry about prioritizing the US before Europe.
Last gen Xbox got outsold in the US by the PS4, nothing crazy in the end because they did have like 45-47% of the market here if I’m not mistaken but during the 360 generation they had over 60% of the US market (compared to PS3) and while that’s probably never going to happen again unless Xbox makes COD exclusive (not happening either for at least a decade if the deal even goes through) they need the US far more than Sony needs it and they should probably be trying harder to make gains here, they cannot do worse than the Xbox One because that would be just embarrassing and it’s not like the Xbox One did bad either, it actually only sold like 4-5 million less than the PS4.
The PS5 seriously outselling the xsx, it’s main competition, by 3:1! And this AFTER the news of the Activision acquisition which shouldve convinced COD players to skip buying the PS5 at least out of fear of it becoming exclusive after three years. Not to mention the fact that starfield was announced as a 2022 game complete with a release date. That shouldve made a dent and convinced people to pick the xsx over the ps5. they didnt.
I keep saying this, but this is on Phil and he needs to go. Whatever he’s doing is not enough. he had $8 billion to spend at the start of the year and he wasted them on starfield and redfall. two games that were always coming to xbox. use that money to get Fable, Perfect Dark and Avowed out faster.
And their Gamepass subscriber growth on console is slower than they anticipated due to lower console sales. You’ve got to sell consoles in order to sell software and drive subscriber growth. They failed on both fronts and anyone that says console sales don’t matter to MS is delusional.
Especially considering the U.S is their strongest market. Especially considering the xss is $200 cheaper. Especially considering they werent supply constrained to begin with.
It really puts to bed all the speculation of Xbox being anything around 20+ million sold-through globally; it’s statistically impossible right now.
imagine, Sony is selling more consoles at DOUBLE the price.
wow… the xbox brand took a beating in the XONE generation.
I bet you even after the ABK deal closes, the vast majority of COD gamers won’t even be aware that Microsoft owns COD. The impact of the acquisition won’t be felt until years later when the Sony marketing deal expires.
And series x is supply constrianed but purposely done to boost xcloud and series s push. I agree series x should be priority. Especially when starfield hits.
Xbox and Game Pass will be fine. Wo Long, Redfall, Forza, AoE4 console are going to review well and are going to be really good and Day 1 Game Pass. And I am assuming the ABK deal will close soon and Diablo 4 will be GP Day 1 as well which comes out in June. Xbox/gamepass is stacked with popular AAA franchise releases. MS just needs to advertise the hell out of them the first half of the year.
I mentioned this earlier, but it seems some are not keeping it in mind – the Xbox sales numbers do not include any products sales directly from Microsoft. At the start of last year that was the best way (sometimes only way) of obtaining a console in the US. While it became easier to find them in some stores, the early messaging of buying direct from Microsoft may have carried throughout the year and into the past Holiday season too.
TLDR: No one but Microsoft knows the real numbers. The sales numbers in the US are better than what is reported, but to what degree is unknown.
The lack of exclusive content has hurt Xbox more than one might have expected, even on a hardware level. I hope tomorrow’s Direct Developer will be the start of a great 2023.
