Saltyk said:
Um... That says sold to retailers. That's not even close to the same thing. Most numbers I have puts Xbox One around 4.2 million units. Not bad numbers mind you. but certainly not 5 million. That article seems to be intentionally misleading. Or more correctly, Microsoft is intentionally misleading with the report.
I was actually specifically looking out for that and missed it -_- even though it's in the first line. In my defence, MS are definitely trying to deliberately mislead here, everyone knows the term is 'shipped'. You don't talk about 'sold... to retailers' unless you want to manipulate the headline into saying 5 million sold.
Technically those numbers are still good. I think it's still higher than the 360 and the PS3, but considering Titanfall and the price cuts, they are being stomped on by Sony right now.
It still doesn't lose them the race, thanks to releasing a year earlier the 360 had 5 million over the PS3 in the PS3's first 6 months and it still didn't recover. But Microsoft have lost a huge amount of ground in a lot of countries and have shown no sign of regaining it elsewhere. If the lead continues until the end of this year (and if Titanfall failed to make the difference, at what point is MS going to produce a more world-changing IP than Sony? Last time Sony caught up with them eventually and not much has changed) then soon we're going to be in a situation where people start asking 'which console do all my friends have?'
Ultratwinkie said:
Now it seems microsoft or Nintendo will leave the market. Sony is still possible if they can't get their other divisions to work. By the end of this generation, only 2 companies will still be around.
I am willing to bet microsoft cuts their losses and runs. It was ballmer's idea to have a console, and ballmer is worse than hitler in the business world.
It's not going to happen. There was a chance they were going to get a CEO who would do that (although thanks to the inter-connectedness of their tech it was inadvisable) but the new CEO has double down on the Xbox. In fact MS are in the process of remaining a couple of their services 'Xbox X', I think their media store is one of those examples.
At the moment Microsoft have finally gotten it together and seen the connected world everyone saw 5 years ago. They haven't yet made their space on mobiles, they don't have tablets either, they only sort of have the internet and all that was losing them a lot of ground with businesses and stuff like Google Docs was even beginning to enroach. The new head of Xbox is head of 'devices and studios'
So the idea now is they leverage the areas they are strong compared to the competition, and they consider the Xbox amongst that, and then they're going to begin trying to unify their tech paths. One of their biggest announcements recently was that they're designing code that will allow people to create an app that will work on the PC, on tablets, on phones
and (eventually) on the Xbox One. More than that I suspect that Kinects voice control and motion recognition is really important technology within MS right now, it puts them in a good place to be on top of the next UI revolution. For example, if VR became big than Kinect would offer the best motion technology for that sort of system.
Nintendo won't leave because they've got nowhere else to go. I still think they're better off abandoning the Wii U and focusing on the 3DS but it won't happen. They'll rely on their core fanbase and just go through the gamecube years again. It minimises the losses because the things which attract those fans, Zelda games etc, will sell like blockbusters. As far as the conservative choice it's correct and it keeps them in the market. I still think they could really go places with their handhelds if they put all their attention on them though.