Next-Gen.biz Feature: Is Xbox 360 Past Its Peak? Options

[Xbox-Scene]

Next-Gen.biz Feature: Is Xbox 360 Past Its Peak? Posted by XanTium | February 28 18:31 EST | News Category: Xbox360

From next-gen.bi: [QUOTE] Seven years after the introduction of its first console, Microsoft is waging a new war with Xbox 360 - against itself. Phil Spencer, the general manager of Microsoft Game Studios Europe, believes the war can still be won. Wondering just how big or small a part of Microsoft the division is? That total revenue of $5.53 billion was part of a $30.3 billion (£15.2 billion) total revenue in the same period, so some rough-as-they-come beer mat sums would tell you it's about 18.25 per cent - a proportion that, even allowing for the varied products contained in the division, puts to rest the sneery idea that Microsoft can simply afford to throw money at the brand. And sure enough, the 360 has hit Microsoft's business targets: in particular, Bill Gates' E3 2006 prediction that the console would sell 10,000,000 units by the end of 2006 was surpassed by nearly half a million. But think about the figures for a moment. If 1.5 million 360s were sold by the end of 2005, 10.4 million by the end of 2006, and 17.7 million by the end of 2007, then the Xbox 360 sold significantly fewer units in 2007 than it did in 2006. The bad news doesn't stop there: 2007 saw its head start battered aside by the unstoppable Wii, with little chance of redress, and the PlayStation 3 reaching the 9.5 million unit mark worldwide. The only territory in which it outsold the PS3 was North America, and without the sales spike around Halo 3 things would have looked considerably worse. It seems strange that this is the case. After all, with its obvious attributes and its late-2007 software lineup, why didn't the Xbox 360 dominate the year, and the Christmas period in particular? Microsoft began 2007 with a huge unit lead, its biggest game properties due to arrive on the shelves, plus a significant marketing spend, and in the event managed to sell less hardware than the previous year. [/QUOTE] Full Story: next-gen.bi (4 pages)

[BasicAir]

This is complete bull$hit. MS has nothing to worry about. They're already in development stages (early, of course) of their next Xbox. They'll be moving their focus onto their next console even moreso before 2009 and so in their minds this round of console wars is pretty much over. I agree with them. MS has had huge success with the Xbox 360 and they show every sign of having even more success next time around. If they're first to market again with the next generation of consoles like they were with the 360, there's a high probability that they will retain most all of their current supporters/customers and thus have another generation of successful gaming to follow up Xbox 360's.

As years go on, MS does nothing but gain more respect and fans in the gaming community. They've had some low points, sure, but overall they keep progressing in the market without any major setbacks.

To speculate that MS is in a downfall for the home console video game business is mind boggling to me. Every possible way I can look at it, they're in the complete opposite situation of just getting better and better.

The only major setback for them is the Japanese market which refuses to adopt either of their consoles thus far. IMO it's all because MS is a western company. You could say it's the games and what not but honestly, I don't see MS ever having a decent amount of success in Japan EVER. It's not really too much to worry about either as the U.S. market is bigger than the Japanese market and UK market put together. Dominance in the U.S. market is therefor much more important than the Japanese market. Besides, MS is targeting western gamers, anyway, so in reality as a whole their business is succeeding imo.

I see nothing to worry about, really. If I were MS, I'd be extremely optimistic about my future.

[Ranger72]

MS will be alienating many of its current 360 owners by dumping their new console in favor of another new console.

I don't know about you but most people expect their investment into their console to last more than a couple years. What will MS do next? Release a new console every 6 months because there is faster GPU's that come out that often? This is where Sony will yet again be the top console of choice.

[fiya]

It really is true that gaming can cause A.D.D.

this article proves it. How do you go from the best console out there to the worst gaming investment in a matter of weeks. A month ago it had everything going for it, now all of a sudden its all doom and gloom.

This fickle "internet culture" is getting really old to me.

MS will be alienating many of its current 360 owners by dumping their new console in favor of another new console.

Not to mention a financial disaster for them.

This post has been edited by fiya: Feb 29 2008, 02:20 AM

[BasicAir]

MS will be alienating many of its current 360 owners by dumping their new console in favor of another new console.

I don't know about you but most people expect their investment into their console to last more than a couple years. What will MS do next? Release a new console every 6 months because there is faster GPU's that come out that often? This is where Sony will yet again be the top console of choice.

Their next console isn't expected to be in stores until 2010, so we've still got another 2 years to go. That'll mean the 360 had a longer lifespan than the original Xbox.

MS would be wise to make their next console compatible with current 360 hard drives. That way we can keep all of our current XBLA titles, dashboard themes, and gamer pictures. If none of these are compatible on the next Xbox, I and many others will be very angry. I've spent a great deal of money on gamer pictures and themes, as well as quite a few XBLA titles, and if I can't play those on the next Xbox, I will have wasted my money (in a sense, of course).

It'll be interesting to see how that all plays out.

But anyway, back on topic -- I really don't see MS having much of anything to worry about. If I were MS, I wouldn't trade my status in the console industry for either Sony's or Nintendos. Nintendo has more sales, sure, but they are not "next generation" nor do they have a "hi tech" console and that's something that's really important to MS is being cutting edge.

If anyone has anything to worry about, it's Sony. It's clear to everyone both fans and industry insiders that Sony has lost a ton of it's market share. Sony was once the market leader just a few years ago with roughly 50% of the home console gaming business for hardware and software. MS and Nintendo have forced them into the 3rd and last position for market share. Sony is nothing like it once was. IMO, Sony's glory days in the home console business are over. Although Sony will likely see success in the future, their 50% market share will never come to be again imo. Not now, and not in 5 or 10 years. At least I don't think so...

[Elemino]

MS will be alienating many of its current 360 owners by dumping their new console in favor of another new console.

I don't know about you but most people expect their investment into their console to last more than a couple years. What will MS do next? Release a new console every 6 months because there is faster GPU's that come out that often? This is where Sony will yet again be the top console of choice.

That's the most idiotic and uneducated thing I've ever heard. Obviously, you have no clue why MS made the decisions they made. They lost money on EVERY Xbox 1 sold. They still lose money on Xbox 1 because they pay royalties to Nvidia for every Xbox 1 game played on the 360. If you had a hole on your body constantly losing blood, I'm sure you'd try to patch it as well.

Also, last I heard MS didn't go for the fastest processors... Sony did... supposedly. The 360 actually makes money, so I'd expect it to be around much much longer than the original was. In fact, if it wasn't for the competition that will start to push the envelope (or try), they probably would stick with the 360 for a very long time. They're already making money on it from what the reports say.

This post has been edited by Elemino: Feb 29 2008, 02:24 AM

[wilson2010]

POPPYCOCK

seriously

[jdsony]

Well I think the PS3 has the advantages in the consumers eyes of Blu-Ray, better reliability track record, free online gaming, and Sony's console history. The Blu-Ray feature has become much more prominent since the imminent death of HD-DVD. People seem to care more about this feature now that it's a sure thing. Personally I think the 360 has much better controllers, better interface, and better games but the PS3 features do garner some interest from me. The other features not in the minds of the average consumer that interest me are the Linux possibilities as well as the much better Harddrive upgrade otpions.

I wouldn't say the 360 is toast but I would agree that they can't just sit back and hope to sell more consoles.

[Zod5000]

I can understand MS dropping the XBOX1 hardware, but they also dropped the software support as well. The one thing I like about sony, is when the next console comes out, they still put games out for the old one.

Once the 360 came out, the new games for the xbox1 dried right up, and that never sat right with me. Because if you don't want to pay (or can't afford) to pay console release date prices, then no new games for a few years.

I'd be really disappointed the MS did that when the 360's successor's comes out. Stopping the production of a money losing console is one thing, but with such a large install base, killing the software really hurt.

[jimk72]

It was explained above why MS dropped xbox 1 games. That should not be a problem with the 360. The whole report is irelivant(SP?)! The PS3 is nolonger a competitor of the 360 and wii. It is a blu-ray player! Everyone I know that has one uses it for movies. Only 1 person that has one has A game(GHero3). As for the WII it is a one game system as far as most are concerned. The people that are buying most of the wii's are not buying any other games. I have a Wii and an xbox 360 Elite as well as A Custom built PC with 8800GT GFX card to play the latest games. The Wii has the one game that came with it. My 360 has 8 games(soon to be 10), and I have many games for my PC(Crysis, COD4, ect..). You see most of these comparisons they throw up are like comparing apples to oranges. My PC does not compete with my 360, and the Wii is only used for Wii sports. There is no competition there. If I was to buy a PS3 it would be used only for Blu-ray and I refuse to go Blu-ray for now so there is no PS3 in the future for me. You sell 17.7 million systems with one of the highest attach rates for games(games sold per system) there is NO way you can say that wasn't success.

Who Cares if people are buying PS3s left and right it has nothing to do with the Game linup for the 360 and the fact It has already won this round. If you want a blu-ray player buy a PS3, if you want the best gaming system(counsel) with the best games the 360 is by far the only choice!

If you think I am a fanboy for MS you are wrong, I go with the best I can buy for my money and PS3 is not worth the money for a gaming system, Blu-ray is its major selling point. Maybe if sony worried less about Blu-ray and more about games for its system I might have a PS3 but instead I am buying more 360 games.

One more thing, Have you seen the games for 360 that are coming later this year? No counsel ever has had this many top games for it. I feel 2009 will bring even more top games to the linup for 360.

[ChrisF]

Sales would move faster with a lower price. After the first Xbox and the RRD snafu I think MSFT wants to keep it up as long as possible and actually pocket the money on the hardware. Now that the PS3 is picking up steam having dropped its price substantially and gotten some titles out, I'd bet a price drop is imminent. The bottom line is that a massive number of people cannot afford to drop $400 on a console. Plenty of market to pick up with $200 and lower pricing. I'd guess this is why the PS3 is moving, those gamers with plenty of funds likely already own 360s and now are buying PS3s - the rest of the world is waiting for the price to come down.

[Mr Invader]

But think about the figures for a moment. If 1.5 million 360s were sold by the end of 2005, 10.4 million by the end of 2006, and 17.7 million by the end of 2007, then the Xbox 360 sold significantly fewer units in 2007 than it did in 2006. The bad news doesn't stop there: 2007 saw its head start battered aside by the unstoppable Wii, with little chance of redress, and the PlayStation 3 reaching the 9.5 million unit mark worldwide. The only territory in which it outsold the PS3 was North America, and without the sales spike around Halo 3 things would have looked considerably worse.

There are several cases for this that they should have considered before saying that the 360 is past it's peak.

The 360 did better in 2006 because it was the only console out there.
Less competition from Sony and Nintendo as a next-gen platform

The PS3 sells well in Japan; the 360 does not
The 360 is still winning in North America I believe, and it's not doing too bad in Europe either.

Just because it isn't selling as much hardware as last year, does not mean that it is losing its "peak"
Attachment rates are amazing for the 360 and people are stilling coming back to play it even with the RoD problems. The Wii's attachment rates are horrible, and the PS3 (maybe until just recently) was bought primarily for multi-media.

I wish I had my 360 right now. I miss it; I hope it comes in next week.

[Jagosix]

Hello Fellow Gamers. What is this guy talking about? X360 has been dominating since it's release in the nextgen market. Granted, Nintendo did good to catchup & surpass X360 in hardware sales only. The software is what we gamers really care about & that's where the X360 is top dog.

EA posted something very interesting on Gamasutra Website that all of you need to check out. Well, I'll tell you anyway. EA posted their earnings for the fiscal quarter ending September 20th 2007. Overall software sales Pulled in $435 Million USD. The X360 Pulled in $218 Million USD. Leaving $217 Million USD for the remaining consoles COMBINED. Yes people the X360 pulled in more profit than the PS3, Wii, NDS, PSP, & PS2 put together !!! This is a feat withing itself. Now this is just one 3rd party company. Can you imagine what the other 3rd party companies are thinking right now . Here's a hint... games on the X360 equals more $$$$$$$ .
The X360 continues to set records. Remember when sales of HALO3 were more than all of the PS3 systems combined worldwide (hmmm it still might be...)? Now if that isn't indication that the X360 is doing a great job in sales, then something is definitely wrong.

People are still buying the X360 as well as the other game systems. But 3rd party software is going to determine which console dominates. Right now the X360 Dominates in Total software sales & the highest attach rate in the history of video games. Thank you MicroSoft for competing in the video gaming industry & making Nintendo & SONY take notice. Competition rules.

[willpower101]

MS will be alienating many of its current 360 owners by dumping their new console in favor of another new console.

I don't know about you but most people expect their investment into their console to last more than a couple years. What will MS do next? Release a new console every 6 months because there is faster GPU's that come out that often? This is where Sony will yet again be the top console of choice.

I'm glad you guys took care of this. Where'd you get every six months anyway?

Anyway, yeah this whole article is just a bunch of fluff crap designed to stir up controversy. It reminds me of articles covering the stock market that say the whole markets DOOMED if someone breaths the wrong way. You don't have much of a story when everything's going peachy keen huh? So lets just make stuff up

this is my favorite part...

The only territory in which it outsold the PS3 was North America

The only! lol. ONLY! ha. They say it like it's sweden or something. I think someone forgot how to count...

This post has been edited by willpower101: Feb 29 2008, 08:50 AM

[Slag Bag]

That's the most idiotic and uneducated thing I've ever heard.

The 360 actually makes money, so I'd expect it to be around much much longer than the original was. In fact, if it wasn't for the competition that will start to push the envelope (or try), they probably would stick with the 360 for a very long time. They're already making money on it from what the reports say.

I have to agree you are making the most idiotic and uneducated statements. The Xbox 360 has only produced profits in one, count them 1, quarter to date. And they only made profit that quarter due to the release of Halo 3. MS is on its way to becoming a name like AOL once a big monster to fear and now a trivia question.