Xbox Series X and S: Microsoft Has Reportedly Sold Less Than 30 Million Consoles This Generation
Xbox Series X and S: Microsoft Has Reportedly Sold Less Than 30 Million Consoles This Generation
For reference, Sony was recently boasting that PS5 sold over 80 million copies. This is terrible for Xbox.
Every time I read any Xbox news, I immediately remember the email that Phil Spencer sent to Satya Nadella when PS5 was announced. The email gets funnier as the days go by, and as additional context gets added in the form of news like the OP.
Inserting below part of the email thread that I like the most:
Even as I type this I know I shouldn't but I can't help myself.
We've all lived with 7 years of starting off a generation with a price and performance (and messaging)disadvantage to PS4 with Xbox One. I have to admit this morning when I woke up knowing the PS5 reveal was today that the stress level was higher than normal. Now after almost 12 hours of soaking in their unveil, taking apart their specs and looking at the community responses I just wanted to say that I'm proud of our team.
We have a better product than Sony does, not just on hardware but equally important on the software platform and services on top of the hardware. We have the ingredients of a winning plan. I felt the feedback from the BoD discussion on being too confident and maybe this will just reinforce that perception, I get the need to be humbly confident but today was a good day for us.
We haven't won anything. And I know we have hard discussion about pricing, P&L, investments etc. This mail isn’t trying to scoop any of that, those discussions really matter. But we can take confidence in our product truth hereand I do believe any conversation needs to start with believing in that. This was a good day for Xbox.
Thanks for indulging me.
Phil
lol, the ps5 controller alone is enough reason to purchase over the xbox. I have both and games are just more fun on the PS5, its better in every way.
meh, the controller is the only thing i prefer on xbox.
I have never used Xbox controllers so I can’t speak for their ergonomics or ease of use.
But I definitely find the DualSense controller to be more aesthetically appealing, partly due to its symmetry, and I have to admit, as silly as it sounds, that it was the second most important factor when purchasing PS4 Pro around a decade ago.
The first most important factor being the games catalogue.
Did everyone in this comments section forget that Microsoft is in fact done with traditional consoles? "Everything is an Xbox", and they'll still release new hardware, but they are talking about Windows gaming, not a platform where they'll have to do cert for a discrete spec. PlayStation games are coming to other platforms now, too. The old console model and console wars are over.
Because companies fucked up consoles. All we ever wanted was split screen games with our friends on the couch. Not a single-player-only Need for Speed for 70€ I can only play with an online subscription with random people over the internet.
They made consoles more and more similar to computers over the years, instead of focusing on the social character consoles used to have.
I've been saying something similar for years: Consoles going online was the worst thing to ever happen to them. Their selling point used to be that you'd put in a cartridge/disc, and it would "just work". Now it has all the downsides of PC gaming, with none of the upsides.
Unfortunately co op was killed by the constant pressure to have the next big graphical wank fest game.
Cause (people didn't buy Xboxes) and effect (Microsoft declared consoles over).
Steam won, btw. Not Windows. The next "console war" will be Steamboxes vs Playstation 6.
The next console wars will be the Switch 2 vs the horrible sinking feeling in your gut.
People seemingly forget that the Switch moved as many consoles as the PS4 and Xbox One combined. I don't even mean people in online forums, because sure. I mean people in the games industry.
Microsoft didn't have to declare consoles over. The market did. Yes, Steam is the big winner, but Sony isn't gaining customers either; perhaps even losing them on consoles.
Asus and Microsoft are by no means excluded from the game. Their ROG is excellent: powerful yet battery-efficient.
I can't understand the nonsensical generational naming scheme on XBox so I just avoid getting one because I don't want to get a previous generation. And my scattered brain keeps forgetting the info I look up because it's inconsequential to actual living in these wild times.
It's a shame because the Series X is an absolutely superb device. The fast storage, quick resume, performance, noise level etc are all incredible, and the backwards compatibility, console streaming, and appeal of game pass make the Series X a wonderful gaming machine. I couldn't be happier with it.
We all know the reasons why it isn't as successful as the PS5, but the Series X as a price-to-value product has been woefully under-appreciated.
We definitely play on the XSX as a family a lot more than the PS5 that's collecting dust upstairs. Its smaller form factor makes it much easier to use as a gaming console in our main living area. But yeah, GamePass is a crazy good deal if you know how to use the conversion trick (buy GamePass core for like 2 years for $80-100 from key reseller, then convert it to Ultimate on MS site at a 2:3 ratio or whatever).
That being said, everyone knows GamePass isn't sustainable long-term. Microsoft truly is killing their gaming division with such short-sighted planning.
Same here. Got it on launch day, and have been very happy with it. It’s a fantastic console.
Consoles wars are stupid, exclusives are stupid.
Good, don’t buy an Xbox. Microsoft is in bed with Israel.
Fewer.
How much you want to bet that game pass goes up to $30 a month in the next 3 months?
Instead of enticing people to buy, they will milk their current customer base to make a few extra bucks short term.
With the "everything is an Xbox" mantra, there's no reason to have a capable PC and an Xbox anymore. I don't mind waiting for PS games on my PC either, leaving only Nintendo still having some appeal.
Which they're trying their absolute hardest to kill with their anti consumer BS re: Switch 2...
Factor in the current payment processor's crusade against PC games, and... well, things are looking pretty bleak all round in the gaming space
Unfortunately Nintendo adults will soy out and apend a bajillion dollars on anything Nintendo does at this point so long as it has pokemon or zelda on it.
Important thing to remember about the “console wars.”
Other than the Nintendo Wii (iirc), most consoles sell at a loss at the beginning of the generation. They eventually turn a profit on console sales, but console sales aren’t the point.
Game sales are.
When each console was its own very specific architecture and games needed to be designed specifically for them, console sales matter a lot because that’s how you’d sell games.
But now that architectures are similar (if not the same), cross-compilation has become easier than ever. It’s why you see Sony finally releasing first party titles on PC.
Microsoft knows full well that their console sales aren’t great, but that’s okay for them. Their PC sales are. Many of their titles sell on Steam. And they sell some of their titles on PlayStation.
They’ll continue to make some form of console because without it they lose out on millions of Game Pass subscriptions from people who don’t want to make the initial investment in a gaming PC, or deal with the complexity, but their goal of making that next console more and more like a PC fits perfectly in their model.
It’s a shame the Series X has sold so poorly, it’s a great console, but I doubt Microsoft is too worried about “losing” the console wars to Sony. The game has changed.
They've also sold less than half the number of XBox One units compared to PS4, and like a third compared to the Switch, so they've been lagging behind for a while.
These days they don't really seem to focus on console gaming at all. I'm curious to see if we'll even get a traditional "next gen" console. It might just be a console UI for Windows PCs instead, with some third-party produced "console"-PCs.
The one thing Xbox has had going for it for a while now is actual usage. There were metrics out there that even with the smaller player base, users engaged with and had more playtime than PS. This was true well into the current gen.
With a used Series S for 100 bucks and Gamepass over VPN from India for 3 per month, i couldnt be happier with my Xbox.
They didn't bring new techno as they did previously with kinetic, pricing was indecent, the hub is such a mess : it looks like Amazon not like a GUI for gaming. It's not surprising if they are loosing customers
Xbox kills game studios
I've been gaming primarily on Xbox since the 360. After Microsoft bought and closed Tango though? I literally vowed to never buy another Xbox product again. I can't even remember the last time I booted my Series X
Every major publishers kills games studios