is it doing as well as MS want it to?
I will be honest, I did not think Xbox One was going to sell as well as it has been. Most estimates puts it at ~4million, which is very good for a system that costs $500. Hopefully, even the most anti-Xbox/MS person can see that these are exceptionally good numbers. Then they started doing unofficial (later official) price cuts in UK and started doing $500 TitanFall and Forza bundles (these are two separate bundles) in the US. This is probably also happening in Canada. Which leads me to believe that either of following scenarios are taking place at the MS HQ:
Scenario One: Internal targets for Xbox One at MS are/were ridiculous. This is a case that we have seen all too often last gen, albeit in the software side of things. Take recent example of Tomb Raider for instance. Last year when most of us were surprised and kind of jubilant about Tomb Raider's sales numbers, Square was talking about how they were disappointed that it did not meet their internal projections. Could MS have fallen for these kinds of over expectations from a product that was never going to achieve them? Although I don't subscript to this notion, I think this is one of the possibilities. After all, companies don't do price cuts or perceived price cuts unless they are not hitting internal targets.
Scenario Two: This is the one that I think describes what is actually happening. MS actually likes those numbers and Xbox One is on track or exceeding their internal projection. What they don't like is the fact that PS4 has out sold them in two of their best markets two months in a row (and might be on track to doing so in the month of March). This is big problem for a them because so much of their business model relies on locking up third party content early on in the generation. If PS4 continues to outsell Xbox One in US and UK, then TitanFall 2 exclusivity becomes that much more expensive. Call of Duty and Battlefield map packs become much more expensive. MS might have a lot of more money than Sony to burn on these things, but at certain point it will become ridiculous from the business stand point.
Do you guys think either of my scenarios is what is happening or is it something I haven't even thought of?
Edit: It seems that some people are taken aback by my use of the word "exceptional" (I did over use that word actually). I meant it was exceptional from my stand point. PS4's numbers are Godly, but Xbox One's numbers are not what I thought they would be and hence they appear exceptional to me.
I will be honest, I did not think Xbox One was going to sell as well as it has been. Most estimates puts it at ~4million, which is very good for a system that costs $500. Hopefully, even the most anti-Xbox/MS person can see that these are exceptionally good numbers. Then they started doing unofficial (later official) price cuts in UK and started doing $500 TitanFall and Forza bundles (these are two separate bundles) in the US. This is probably also happening in Canada. Which leads me to believe that either of following scenarios are taking place at the MS HQ:
Scenario One: Internal targets for Xbox One at MS are/were ridiculous. This is a case that we have seen all too often last gen, albeit in the software side of things. Take recent example of Tomb Raider for instance. Last year when most of us were surprised and kind of jubilant about Tomb Raider's sales numbers, Square was talking about how they were disappointed that it did not meet their internal projections. Could MS have fallen for these kinds of over expectations from a product that was never going to achieve them? Although I don't subscript to this notion, I think this is one of the possibilities. After all, companies don't do price cuts or perceived price cuts unless they are not hitting internal targets.
Scenario Two: This is the one that I think describes what is actually happening. MS actually likes those numbers and Xbox One is on track or exceeding their internal projection. What they don't like is the fact that PS4 has out sold them in two of their best markets two months in a row (and might be on track to doing so in the month of March). This is big problem for a them because so much of their business model relies on locking up third party content early on in the generation. If PS4 continues to outsell Xbox One in US and UK, then TitanFall 2 exclusivity becomes that much more expensive. Call of Duty and Battlefield map packs become much more expensive. MS might have a lot of more money than Sony to burn on these things, but at certain point it will become ridiculous from the business stand point.
Do you guys think either of my scenarios is what is happening or is it something I haven't even thought of?
Edit: It seems that some people are taken aback by my use of the word "exceptional" (I did over use that word actually). I meant it was exceptional from my stand point. PS4's numbers are Godly, but Xbox One's numbers are not what I thought they would be and hence they appear exceptional to me.
