“What’s striking about this situation is how unexpected it was back in 2012.”
I always expected in 2012 that the PS4 would outsell the next Xbox even before we had official news on the reveals of the 8th gen systems.
PS3 reached 70 million units sold around the same time as Xbox 360 did despite being more expensive and releasing a year later. What chance would Microsoft have in the next gen if they couldn’t even keep the lead that releasing one year ahead afforded them?
Plus the North American market is the most fickle market so no one company could have absolute claim to always reign supreme within the territory. Meanwhile in other markets in the worldwide arena PlayStation always outperformed the Xbox brand. Even with Xbox 360 gaining so much marketshare in the largest console market in the world, it was still selling at a slower rate since day one than PlayStation 3.
So while Microsoft could try all its might to win the NA market for their next Xbox console in the following year, it was clear back then it’d be impossible for them to be PS4 in the global space. Same principle holds true for the 9th gen successors.
I'm glad I bought into both. I know not everyone can do that but I've been a gamer for a really long time (over 40 years) and always enjoyed playing the field.
Yeah PS4 and switch for me owned and Xbox for 4 months then realised what a mistake I’d made and sold it again. Such a poor gen from them. Glad I didn’t keep my console until gears 5 and crackdown, gears might have been alright but crackdown looked awful.
Yup. A lot of gamers that have been around long enough could see who was going to end up on top even if Microsoft hadn't tripped themselves up.
We said in the past that if Sony and Microsoft launched at the same time, Microsoft would get dominated. We just didn't know the level of domination from games, awards, sales, add-ons like VR, amount of content, third party support, etc. It's surprising given the competition of Nintendo, Microsoft, cell phones, tablets, streaming services, etc for consumer's attention. Sony went past Warp 9. Beyond Trans Warp. Beyond Slip Streaming. Yeah. Star Trek reference.
What would be interesting though is to get the perspective of Bloodmask, Top Gamer, Power of Green, The Mart and every........interesting commenter on N4G back in the day to see if they have those same views about a certain company today. And what they thought of Sony's almost complete domination of their opponent. It would be a fascinating update.
The launch reminded me of the saturn / ps1 days where Sega made all sorts of mistakes and sony capitalized on them and ran with it. Now despite the mistakes of the suits... that doesnt mean the hardware is bad. Quite the contrary, saturn was an amazing piece of kit and had some really well made games but to little to late.
Same with MS and they had the ability to correct things earlier on but they just didnt. The hardware is still good but its management and execution... not so much. I will say though, XBO has fared considerably better than the saturn but both were way behind their principal competition through no fault but their own incompetence.
"PS3 reached 70 million units sold around the same time as Xbox 360 did despite being more expensive and releasing a year later. What chance would Microsoft have in the next gen if they couldn’t even keep the lead that releasing one year ahead afforded them?"
That's kind of a shallow way of thinking. MS was still a popular console on its own despite being cheaper and a year lead. Everyone wanted Halo and its was the COD machine and XBL attracted many plus it had good games, at the start anyway. It wasn't popular due to Sony's missteps, sure it helped it but it wasn't the ultimate factor.
That's a strawman on your part, he never argued that the 360 wouldn't become popular in its own right. His point was that it would have suffered a bigger loss in market share had the PS3 launched in a more favorable condition.
Since MS first talked about DRM, I knew Sony was going to walk away with the generation. I think they would have had more competition from MS had they not screwed up the launch, but I think Sony would have still won overall this gen...barring another Nintendo triumph. Xbox brand just isn't as strong worldwide, and last gen, their numbers were bolstered quite a bit due to RRoD.
I didn't expect MS to take quite so much a pounding from Sony though. Not just in console sales, but overall. MS has done some good stuff this gen, but their biggest failing....first party game output...has held them back more than the early DRM/Kinect/Always online has.
I remember how surreal the rumor articles were about the type of DRM Microsoft was planning to implement before the XB1 reveal. In my mind I was like "There is no way they are going to try this stuff, I don't believe it". Than the reveal happened......my God the meltdowns that ensued was comedy gold. The mass exodus that I saw from the Xbox camp was like a scene from an apocalyptic movie. I legitimately thought the Xbox camp was going to be a deserted wasteland for this entire generation lol.
I didn't believe the rumor articles, and was telling people there was no way that MS would have an always online console after the Adam Orth controversy. I didn't think MS would be that stupid. I was telling Sony fan boys to back off, because they were being reactionary. I did discuss the potential ramifications though since I found it a good discussion. In the end, not only were they that stupid, they went well beyond what I thought a company would try with the DRM. In the end, most of my philosophical pondering on the issue in forums turned out to be true....that no one would want an always online device.
It was pretty surreal though, because it's the first time in a long time I've seen the gaming community pretty much all agree on a topic, and even most of the rampant fan boys or Xbox extreme fan boy streamers were either upset with MS, or dead silent on the issue. There were a couple that fought the good fight, but even when MS told their fans how to sell it, which they need to do because people can't think for themselves, they still didn't do it, because no one would listen.
“The reasons why the ps4 did such a turnaround is mainly price and hardware”
There was nothing from PS4 to turnaround from. It was hugely successful since day one.
@ Angel
“That's kind of a shallow way of thinking.”
What’s shallow about pointing out the truth? Xbox 360 was hugely successful in its own right that wasn’t enough to maintain its lead over the competition. At the end of the day it’s still the slowest selling 7th gen system.
It was cheaper, it was faster and it had better games.
It also helped the Microsoft's decisions announced only 6 months prior to launch were all anti consumer, like forcing an expensive kinect bundle, locking games to each machine, always online being mandatory and talking incessantly about TV services rather than you know, GAMES. The backlash was brutal and rightly so. No goodwill even when some of those decisions were reversed.
It was all over the moment that Microsoft 2013 reveal was finished. PS4 was going to easily win.
False. Not everyone will spend 1000 plus to play a Xbox title. If you play mainly PC you're sticking with that, if you play console you're sticking with that pretty sure we made this clear already. What would you say if Sony put there games on PC? Would it hurt Sony and everyone will play PS games on PC? No, I highly doubt that.
Wii U was a mess. Xbox One was a mess. Sony lowered the price of PS4 after hearing XBO price down $100. MS said a bunch of BS and Sony said the opposite of the BS. They had a great marketing campaign. Sony was good about keeping the momentum as MS and Nintendo struggled with exclusives people wanted despite some hiccups like 1886 and Knack but responded with Bloodborne and old faithful Uncharted and kept going from there. MS could never get out that big-name exclusive people wanted and released mediocrity. Nintendo had to start all over...in 2017 so while the Switch is doing well by that point PS4 was unstoppable.
Sony said they wanted to hit that $400 price point before the price reveal. They said they wanted to include a camera due to VR and it's social features which was the big thing for this gen, but the $400 price point didn't allow it.
Assuming that's true, then the $400 price point was not a reaction to MS $500 price point, because realistically, with all the other mistakes MS made, Sony could have included the camera, and still released it at $500, and made more of a profit, because PS4 looked a lot better than X1 at the start of the gen.
Sony last gen were quietly building a solid foundation of 1st party studios whilst placing faith in their products. MS on the other hand, built an entire install base off 3rd party content such as COD and FIFA. The number 1 reason to own an Xbox last gen was because your friend had one. It was an inferior console then and the XB1 is an inferior console now.
Ms built their house out of straw whilst Sony worked hard to make bricks.
Games. But if you want more it’s a competitive price from day1 hence you barely got any price cuts they didn’t overcharge day1 just settled for a great value. Lots of games old and new. And of course quality. The console was built to last had no issues with mine the games have been brilliant and a very good generation from Sony.
Price, being nice to consumers, Sony slipped in than psn plus will be required to play onoune without much backlash because ms were messing up so badly
And let's be honeys here ps4 was gonna sell better than Xbox no matter what just like Ps5 will sell better than next Xbox. The only way Xbox can stay on top is by releasing early. That is one advantage Sony isn't going to give. Sony has a long track record of delivering games and world wide brand recognition is much better with more trust on ps than Xbox. Ps3 came out a year after, higher priced, not much software support early and hard to develop for yet still outsold the Xbox 360 in less time
Sony went from the Cell processor to a more friendly solution that paid out in the long run by switching to AMD. On top of that the Xbox One E3 presentation didn't help them out at all. They had to play catch up from that point. And exclusive games.
I'd say since we live in the internet age, fanboys had more to do with sales than ever before. Don't get me wrong the PS4 is a better console but positivity was amplified on Playstation's side and negativity was on the Xbox side. There's no argument there.
DRM and lack of vision. Simple as that. The community responded to a brand that tried peeing on us while simultaneously trying to convince us its rain.
If that's the truth then it's basically admitting misinformation was the cause. They didn't follow through with DRM. I'm not saying Microsoft had good foresight trying to push that at E3, but the fact that it didn't actually happen is something everybody should no.
No misinformation since Digital Rights didn't make it to market, as we know. I'm just giving broad strokes here. The DRM fiasco was a betrayal to their fanbase and the community. Microsoft's lack of vision was not focusing on first-party software, which would of showed us they had faith in the industry instead of giving us television.
@strayanalog, Don Mattrick saw Xbox as a competitor to Apple not Sony. We've all seen the story a million times, Microsofts former CEO and Xbox's former head are basically to blame for all of that. The fact that Xbox reversed nearly all of the mistakes they made in the first two years of the gen is impressive for any company trying to be the #2 gaming corporation in the world. I'm not justifying their mistake, Xbox made mistakes and they deserve criticism for that but they often get criticism for the things they did right or are in the process of correcting. First party studios require years of talent, work, funding, blood and sweat. The Xbox of yesterday was the mistake of ten suits who saw E3 2013 as their own personal red carpet while getting payoffs from Comcast. God, I remember all my friends who work at Xbox's engineer team literally crying at the bar because of how much they felt like the leadership was misrepresenting their work. Most of the people at Xbox have faith in the industry but like always a group of privileged money blind idiots messed up the lives of the people who depend on them.
I think Microsoft backed several of the wrong horses at the start of the generation and by the time they realised their mistake they'd been thoroughly outmuscled by Sony. In a shocking turn of events it transpired that what people wanted to do on their games consoles was play games, not everything but.
Playstation triumphed because they have studios and talent that kick out really great games. Playstation triumphed because when Microsoft announced the XB1 they dropped the ball and pissed off some serious fans like always having to be left on inclusion of the Kinnect and DRM for used games.
I mean Xbox one is far from a failure, and its a fine machine, but for lack of a better term, MS dug their own grave with XBO. Sony did what they always did and kept steady on developing their 1st party offerings like any console manufacturer should, and like they all have done untill Kinect released. That was pretty much the turning point where MS slowed on 1st party exclusives. By the end of the 360s life people were frustrated that it boiled down to 3 IPs which even still they are leaning too hard on(though the future looks promising) meanwhile their biggest competitor was still releasinghit after hit and they just kept getting better. Take that already primed frustration and add XBOX Ones reveal nightmare and it's damn hard to not want to go with a different console.
Better games obviously and you didn’t need to pay 100 extra for a useless device , that didn’t help them at launch either . But they were lacking great games all generation .
Well condering sony has the top 3 best selling home consoles of alltime and the best 4 out of 5 alltime i would say there just bigger worldwide. Microsoft can possibly take the US market next gen if they play their cards right but there not gonna win in global sales. Besides the fact the hype for the ps5 is through the roof
Many factors that everyone points out pushed ps4 up...but it won because it existed. Even their worst screw up was better than xbox's best success in the end.
After what amounted to a technical win against the PS3, MS thought that - were certain - they owned the market and could do whatever they wanted, which included Kinect and always online. Likely think they recovered with the XBX, gamepass and the promise of more games as if they haven't made that promise before.
Honestly, that kind of arrogant mentality is ingrained into all of MS, not just Xbox. If you're in IT, what I heard coming from Xbox execs during the launch period sounded like the same self assuredness that they put into their marketing of all their other non-gaming related products. Confidence that the customers will want it, and talking about it in a way that assumes the customers are on board with whatever new thing they come up with.
More often than not, outside some of their enterprise solutions where they can't talk down on their customers like that, there is usually a lot of criticism about what MS is making, or trying to do with those products.
MS pushes new ideas that give them control, regardless of if it's good for the consumer, but they are good at wrapping that up in pretty packages that gets people's attention. But, with the X1, they underestimated just how jaded the gaming community is, and they needed that community to help market it's products during the launch phase. They underestimated the power of social media, which ironically, Sony embraced from the get go this gen with their new marketing firm, and it's paid off wonderfully for them. MS is doing the social media stuff now....which is where we get a lot of these "good guy phil" articles from. But, I think it's not catching on as quickly, or with as much veracity as it did for Sony, because they don't have much in the way of actual product to back up the talk.
Let's take a moment to give credit where is due...
Last gen, Sony, instead of abandoning the PS3 which practically was dead, ( as other companies have abandon their products, example the Wii U), they managed to take a dead console and revive it with amazing exclusive games and managed to surpass the Xbox 360 in the long run.
That's a big achievement and that assured me that the PS4 was going to be a hit. Is the passion that Sony has for gaming that made them the king of consoles owning the best selling consoles in history.
When was it practically dead? It didn't have a situation like the wii u at all. I'll point it out yet again' Ps3 and 360 aligned launches had ps3 leading every step of the way.
PS3 was never practically dead. It had a slow start, but was always selling out until the first revision which cut the price, because they couldn't make enough to meet demand. Most of that shortage was due to sourcing issues with the CELL and Blu-Ray lasers in the first 6 months. It still sold faster than the 360 though. After they were able to reduce the price, it was pretty smooth sailing, and then when the games started rolling in regularly from their 1st party, and the 3rd party was starting to push that gens new software in earnest, Sony did just as well as MS did.
Is it really that hard to understand though?!?! I mean for me at least and I'd imagine more feel this way because of the massive numbers the PS4 has seen and still sells at normal prices, is the awesome games. You get the big third party titles plus most indies and the incredible exclusives from Sony's first and second party devs. It's not brain science.
I can see how a younger person may not grasp this because you only know what you've experienced or seen and if you never play TLOU, Unch, GOW, HZD etc you don't know what's up. Sure you can hear what people say or even watch a clip but until you personally experience these games you just don't know. Also if you didn't experience the bad years of the 360 then you don't know.
I used to be a huge Xbox mark, as much as I was a PlayStation mark because the more great games the better in my book! But and for me it's been the horrible practices and policies they have and have tried to implement. After E3 2013 I saw all I needed to see to know how this gen would go for Xbox. I see the "outrage for cross play"(even though Sony's done it longer and has more crossplay titles) and I'm like did you watch the One's unveiling?!?! I loved my Xbox and the exclusives it had and got a 360 day one but after 4 RRD's and those great varied fore mentioned exclusives becoming fewer and fewer and that combined with the headache of dealing with hardware issues I was done!
At this point it's up to MS if I ever buy an Xbox again. To me MS did this to themselves. If they had the same level of quality titles they would've sold more units this gen. There's such a gape for a reason and it's not like Sony cuts the price to give them away, no most of the year they are still full price but they keep selling.
It's doesn't take a detective to figure out what's going on. I've had a blast this gen though and I'll be there day one to pick up my PS5!
I wouldn't categorize those who don't have a PlayStation as younger. Maybe people have interests in multiplayer and cinematic games aren't their thing? The Last of Us is a mature game but plenty of adults prefer Mario Kart or Halo. Say what you will about the quality of Playstation games but outside of one or two releases they're very uniform, just like how Xbox is very service and co-op centric.
Not just exclusively, that was just an example and I figured that was obvious. Also that is why a lot of folks bailed in 2013. The context needed for that decision to leave Xbox was being old enough to know when the brand was much better. With the compelling games becoming scarce combined with the way they wanted to take the industry it's a no brainer! To have been there for the OG Xbox and great early 360 years only to see it become what it's become.
They showed their cards too soon at that E3 conference and got burned. Is this the only reason?!?! No but ask around and it's one of the big ones!
Edit: Most PS gamers have a Switch so I guess gamers who want some depth to their games also like Mario.
Like in the beginning? Price + power. Exclusive game narrative wasn't a thing so that wasn't it. I also wondered why the more sales on ps4 even though xbox had more than ps4 at launch. Playstation consoles launch dry here's hoping ps5 launches with more this time.
Very easy answer - GAMES. More specifically GREAT EXCLUSIVE games. XBOne - which hardly has any great exclusive games PS4 - has a plethora of great exclusive games The multi platform games can already be played on PS4
Any smart consumer can see which is worth buying and which to skip.
I bought a PS4 at launch, knowing full well Sony would deliver on the gaming front. I made the mistake of buying the XBOne at launch, thinking Microsoft would continue from the 360 generation. Barely any great exclusives on the system and this is what, Year 6?
I know a definitely won't be buying Scarlett day 1, until they start releasing GREAT exclusives on their system. Buying Obsidian is a great start, but that is only 1 studio (Look how many Sony have).
Everyone keeps talking about sales. Yes PS4 has sold a lot more then XBOne, but sales alone doesn't dictate who wins a generation, its the system with the most great games. Usually the system with the most great games, also has the most sales, but yeah.
Pretty simple: The people running Playstation cared alot more about gaming at the beginning of the gen, and just a bit more at the end of the gen. Caring an awful lot is all it takes, either Nelson Mandella or the Lorax said that.
“What’s striking about this situation is how unexpected it was back in 2012.”
I always expected in 2012 that the PS4 would outsell the next Xbox even before we had official news on the reveals of the 8th gen systems.
PS3 reached 70 million units sold around the same time as Xbox 360 did despite being more expensive and releasing a year later. What chance would Microsoft have in the next gen if they couldn’t even keep the lead that releasing one year ahead afforded them?
Plus the North American market is the most fickle market so no one company could have absolute claim to always reign supreme within the territory. Meanwhile in other markets in the worldwide arena PlayStation always outperformed the Xbox brand. Even with Xbox 360 gaining so much marketshare in the largest console market in the world, it was still selling at a slower rate since day one than PlayStation 3.
So while Microsoft could try all its might to win the NA market for their next Xbox console in the following year, it was clear back then it’d be impossible for them to be PS4 in the global space. Same principle holds true for the 9th gen successors.
Games and goodwill.
Games. Didn't need an article for this.
Games