5749

Well, to be fair, there is the issue of holiday stock sometimes sitting on shelves for weeks due to over-ordering. Eventually, that stuff gets sold, but it can throw off monthly sales numbers.

5750

Because ET. And similar debacles where ultimately the number of items shipped was very different from the number sold. What retailers think they can sell is not always the same as the number of units that people actually want to buy.

It’s a trivial difference when something is selling extraordinarily well, as with the early days of the Wii, but I can understand skepticism with a struggling console.

5751

Just goes to show that price really is a critical differentiator. You simply can’t launch $100 higher than your competition unless you have exclusives people really, really want. There aren’t many of those exclusive franchises left.

5752

Or extending finance terms, allowing 120 or 180 days to pay for the stock.

5753

Yup. It’s what a few of us said early on when the pricing was announced. That $100 difference was HUGE to shoppers.

On a related note, going back through this thread from the beginning is one of the most entertaining things I’ve done in a while.

5754

This is spot on. The thing that finally pushed me over the edge to buying an XBone was when they were offering a game + a $50 gift card with the console. Everyone was so enthusiastic for Destiny, and I wanted to play. $350 for XBone + Destiny looked a lot better than $450 for PS4 + Destiny. I looked over the exclusives and couldn’t talk myself back into the PS4 camp. If I’d seen a Ratchet and Clank title upcoming or something similar I would have wavered.

Of course, it turned out that Insomniac was in fact making an exclusive for the XBone that wasn’t on my radar: Sunset Overdrive.

5755

Waaaay off topic, but I recently had a great time going back through the Captain America thread, from rumors to reality. We were not optimistic!

5756

We’re not talking about a brand new product with questionable appeal. The Xbox One has been up for sale for over a year now, has sold millions of units, and current and projected demand is a pretty solid thing at this point.

5757

If the appeal is not in question, why is the change in sales numbers such a big deal? Keep in mind that I own one now, so I want to see lots of games made for it. I just understand why there’s some skepticism from some quarters as to newly reported success.

5758

Everybody understand the skepticism, but “get your shit together” angriness? That’s a whole new level of fanboy crazy, especially when being dead wrong.

5759

Point taken. The specific exchange screenshot - from what, twitter? - is a bit loony in how inappropriately angry it is.

5760

Yeah, lets start criticizing random internet assholes for being jerks on twitter. I’m sure we’ll run out of material shortly after the heat death of the universe.

5761

Getting angry because the video game platform you don’t own is selling well is on the same level as the “Bayonetta 2 shouldn’t exist if it’s going to be a Wii U exclusive” idiots.

Good for forum laughs, in both cases!

5762

One can live in the vain hope that if criticized enough, they’ll change.

5763

ET was a brand new product everyone expected to sell millions. Surface RT was a brand new product that Microsoft had major expectations for. Amazon was extremely bullish on their Fire Phone. In all cases, they were pretty much catastrophic failures that forced companies to take major writeoffs and retailers had to scramble to figure out what to do.

Xbox One is not in that situation. They’ve already sold millions of them. Reviews of games for the system are already out there. They already saw a glimpse of whatever sales spike there might be and they’re still ordering more. Shipped numbers are not going to be disproportionately higher than sold numbers because there’s already enough data out there to know how well it’ll sell.

5764

Just console fanboys. Sadly, it’s not new.

It’s funny – you would have thought Microsoft would have picked that up from the last generation, where they reaped the benefit of the PS3 launching at a higher price point. I’m willing to give MS the benefit of the doubt that their plans for online-only playing and a strong online marketplace might have been based in something other than absolute arrogance. The pricing, however, was clearly based on a combination of arrogance over the 360s domination last time around and pricey components. As it turns out, they launched not only with a higher price than the competition, but with what most critics considered “less horsepower” than the competition – a pretty clear recipe for failure.

That said, damnit, I’m still not going to buy an Xbox One (this coming from someone who owned 2 Xboxes and 3 360s!) unless and until they release a Media Center Extender app.

5765

Eh, it doesn’t take a unique brand of arrogance to assume it wasn’t just the price that made them the winners. Selling great? Must be our hard work and unique design decisions! Losing the race? Must be the price keeping people from discovering our hard work and unique design decisions! It would be pretty easy for anyone to learn the wrong lessons from a win, plus MS has had a lot of changes with who’s calling the shots since the 360 launched.

5766

Yep. The true irony is they repeated the exact mistake Sony made the previous generation. This was immediately obvious to observers, but MS in its arrogance refused to consider they might have it wrong.

Telefrog mentioned rereading the beginning of the thread. Not a bad idea. Reminders how astonishingly poorly MS botched the Xbone’s introduction, all that talk about watching live TV, and football, and the xbox-exclusive TV shows. None of which anyone cared about then in early 2013, and the same holds true now.

5767

I’m a huge MCE user – it’s the hub of our TV at home ever since I dumped DirecTV. Love it, and our bedroom TV has a 360 as an MC extender. But since there’s been no announcement of MCE support on Xbox One, I’m looking at using Plex to do it. Not quite as flexible as a full extender, but it will let you play recordings.

5768

Hey DennyA, can you schedule recordings through Plex? I know it’s not a 1:1 MCE solution but curious as to how it compares