Circana (NPD) November 2023: #1 COD MWIII #2 Spider-Man 2 #3 Hogwarts Legacy; PS5 #1 Units + Revenue, XBS #2 Units + Revenue

[JAHGamer]

Also this forum will never accept basic information that Series X was supply constrained in the US up to June 2023 and will never understand what supply/demand actually looks like in practice. It's ignored or outright dismissed every piece of evidence that isn't even from me as well.

You’re still going on about these imaginary shortages?

Explain to us then, how did Xbox “with shortages”, sell better than Xbox with plentiful supply, $350/$150 price tag, and Starfield, HiFi Rush, and Forza.

Xbox has been down every month in every region, they were only able to be up 4% yoy in the UK in November, and down 20% in the US. How is that possible given the “shortages”?

Just because the gullible people on Install Base believe your lies doesn’t mean everyone will.

 

[anonpuffs]

You’re still going on about these imaginary shortages?

Explain to us then, how did Xbox “with shortages”, sell better than Xbox with plentiful supply, $350/$150 price tag, and Starfield, HiFi Rush, and Forza.

Xbox has been down every month in every region, they were only able to be up 4% yoy in the UK in November, and down 20% in the US. How is that possible given the “shortages”?

Just because the gullible people on Install Base believe your lies doesn’t mean everyone will.

I mean he still hasn't come to grips with the fact that xbox having low stock isn't the same as having pent-up demand. They simply didn't manufacture many of them because they knew they wouldn't sell through - and would you look at that, $150 price cut and it still isn't selling through.

 

[Cool hand luke]

Also this forum will never accept basic information that Series X was supply constrained in the US up to June 2023 and will never understand what supply/demand actually looks like in practice. It's ignored or outright dismissed every piece of evidence that isn't even from me as well.

There it is again. Zero understanding of supply and demand. There was a lack of demand for the XSX, otherwise the bundles would've sold out or the price of the standalone would've been pushed up. Neither event occurred.

 

[KiryuRealty]

You don't know how retail works then. Most purchases are bought at the moment, in the store. Especially in the week leading up to Christmas as that is when last minute panic shopping is at its highest.

A good chunk of the total video game retail market only buy at GameStop and people that casually buy video game content from GameStop aren't going to know about the $349 deals at other retailers. I think the biggest evidence for this would be how the Series X didn't completely crater at GameStop's rankings while being cheaper everywhere else, and maintained a similar ranking relative to PS5 and Switch as it had for weeks prior.

Microsoft was still advertising only a $399 price on Twitter last week even after all the retailers dropped it to $349, so the only people who'd even know about the $349 prices are those that are online enough to know who Wario64 is, or were already shopping at Best Buy, Amazon, Walmart, and Target to see the new $349 price.

Your thinking also falls apart when Walmart was selling the Series X at $349 for weeks all on its own, yet Series X sales went up at Best Buy and Target when made available at $349. If everyone knew about the $349 deals, everyone interested would've just bought them at Walmart and not wait for other retailers to drop the price.

Walmart sold a certain amount of $349 Series X by itself for 3 weeks. Best Buy and Target then lower Series X to $349 and saw sales increase, ergo, GameStop would also see an increase in sales if it went down to $349.

Everyone interested did buy one.

Since your mental abilities are not up to snuff, we need to once again explain to you that NOBODY WANTS XBOX, HENCE SALES ARE LOW.

 

[KiryuRealty]

Years of talking to retail workers. Even with games, the average consumer walking into a store isn't very aware of what is going on.

This is a survey conducted by Slickdeals in 2022 that showed 73% of Americans make impulse purchases at an average of $314 a month

America’s Love for Impulse Spending is Going Strong in 2022

Slickdeals latest impulse survey shows that Americans are shrugging off inflation concerns by opening their wallets. Here's what consumers are spending their money in 2022.

money.slickdeals.net

Here's another about retail vs online but it isn't video game focused https://chainstoreage.com/survey-physical-stores-dominate-impulse-purchases#:~:text=The rate of impulse purchasing,from the survey are below

The above is more general and not focused on holiday shopping, but we also have years and years of data that shows there is a reason why Sony and Microsoft have been cutting their prices in December over the past generation, in the lead up to Christmas. Before, consoles were price cut before the holidays and retailers would just bundle items at most for Black Friday. Then the consoles started seeing official bundles/price discounts for Black Friday, then it became price cuts for both Black Friday and then the few weeks up to Christmas. The idea is to get an impulsive purchase made for your product over the competition.

Even then, my "theory" isn't one, but reality. How would you explain all the Series X that were purchased from the time of December 1 to, what, the 16th, outside of Walmart, when Walmart had the best deal of $349 while other stores were at $499? Or that every retailer saw sales increase at $349 even though Walmart had already been selling the X at $349 for weeks? Sales didn't dry up anywhere because one retailer had a great deal, and sales went up everywhere that dropped to $349.

Also this forum will never accept basic information that Series X was supply constrained in the US up to June 2023 and will never understand what supply/demand actually looks like in practice. It's ignored or outright dismissed every piece of evidence that isn't even from me as well.

You’re a fine one to talk about dismissing evidence, with everything you say being an utter fabrication and misrepresentation of the truth.

 

[JAHGamer]

You’re a fine one to talk about dismissing evidence, with everything you say being an utter fabrication and misrepresentation of the truth.

He won't answer any questions or provide any evidence, he'll go back to Install Base and then come back here in a few weeks and talk about imaginary shortages again. Rinse and repeat.

 

[KnittedKnight]

I think the truth is a bit in the middle, but since the arguments get pitched around narratives you get the back n forth and the absolute extremes for either-or. Impulse buying is a real thing, and consumer misinformation on product quality and product options is what allows an inferior product like Xbox Series to still sell tens of millions despite the PS5 being the superior product in practically every way imaginable. There is also the fact that with a more stable PS5 supply to meet outsized demand, the chances of impulse buying a Series when the PS5 is readily available shortens significantly.

What happened during the first two years of this gen which benefited Xbox Series sales immensely at PlayStation's expense, is more or less gone. In effect what you had for the first two years of this generation was a sales quota and ceiling cap on PlayStation 5 sales. Since the ever shrinking diehard Xbox base has more or less made the shift to next gen, what's left of that pool on Xbox One is not enough to stop the cratering of the sales as those consumers transition over - that tap is currently an insignificant trickle and almost dried up as a share of the market - that is, the ones that won't entertain switching at all (whether to PS, PC or Switch). PS5 puts pressure on Xbox sales from the high-end demo pool, while Switch does it from the price-sensitive bottom up casual pool of consumers.

If the chip shortage early on this gen had not put a quota on PS5 availability and Sony had significantly greater production scalability ready, at launch (which they clearly did not at the time, regardless of the chip shortage) in order to meet Yr1/Yr2 outsized demand and prevent Xbox with its quota as well as the Switch from filling that demand void then Xbox Series, in my opinion, would be a dead console today. It's simply a gaming device with little to no effectual differentiation, no matter the lazy Microsoft pitches, coming off a horrible gen with the same poor characteristics. It's not a coincidence that when the PS5 is readily available, along with the Switch, you see Xbox sales cratering and in effect, being squeezed out - and this has been an ongoing effect. This could have happened much earlier, much much earlier, but that depended on both the chip shortage, and production/manufacturing scalability of PS5 to meet the outsized, front-loaded demand. That manufacturing scalability readiness simply was not there at the outset, not for the sort of demand the PS5 was having and the chip shortage merely compounded that problem. Switch did its job however, and Nintendo did capitalize, at both Sony's and to a lesser degree MS's expense.

Beyond that read I think Sony being on the AMD tit along with MS has also shown to be a liability for heavy front-loaded production scalability if you want to, lets say, make a drowning push at the outset of a gen to sink Xbox. At least beefing up manufacturing capacity, in a "no excuse" scenario should stress that theory on a launch environment - although conditions are very hard to repeat - specially a shortage. Nintendo is immune to that by going with Nvidia, and we saw how beneficial that was to them. Pro's and cons... always a thing.

 

[anonpuffs]

I think the truth is a bit in the middle, but since the arguments get pitched around narratives you get the back n forth and the absolute extremes for either-or. Impulse buying is a real thing, and consumer misinformation on product quality and product options is what allows an inferior product like Xbox Series to still sell tens of millions despite the PS5 being the superior product in practically every way imaginable. There is also the fact that with a more stable PS5 supply to meet outsized demand, the chances of impulse buying a Series when the PS5 is readily available shortens significantly.

What happened during the first two years of this gen which benefited Xbox Series sales immensely at PlayStation's expense, is more or less gone. In effect what you had for the first two years of this generation was a sales quota and ceiling cap on PlayStation 5 sales. Since the ever shrinking diehard Xbox base has more or less made the shift to next gen, what's left of that pool on Xbox One is not enough to stop the cratering of the sales as those consumers transition over - that tap is currently an insignificant trickle and almost dried up as a share of the market - that is, the ones that won't entertain switching at all (whether to PS, PC or Switch). PS5 puts pressure on Xbox sales from the high-end demo pool, while Switch does it from the price-sensitive bottom up casual pool of consumers.

If the chip shortage early on this gen had not put a quota on PS5 availability and Sony had significantly greater production scalability ready, at launch (which they clearly did not at the time, regardless of the chip shortage) in order to meet Yr1/Yr2 outsized demand and prevent Xbox with its quota as well as the Switch from filling that void then Xbox Series, in my opinion, would be a dead console today. It's simply a gaming device with little to no effectual differentiation, no matter the lazy Microsoft pitches, coming off a horrible gen with the same poor characteristics. It's not a coincidence that when the PS5 is readily available, along with the Switch, you see Xbox sales cratering and in effect, being squeezed out - and this has been an ongoing effect. This could have happened much earlier, much much earlier, but that depended on both the chip shortage, and production/manufacturing scalability of PS5 to meet the outsized, front-loaded demand. That manufacturing scalability readiness simply was not there at the outset, not for the sort of demand the PS5 was having and the chip shortage merely compounded that problem. Switch did its job however, and Nintendo did capitalize, at both Sony's and to a lesser degree MS's expense.

Beyond that read I think Sony being on the AMD tit along with MS has also shown to be a liability for heavy front-loaded production scalability if you want to, lets say, make a drowning push at the outset of a gen to sink Xbox. Nintendo is immune to that by going with Nvidia, and we saw how beneficial that was to them. Pro's and cons... always a thing.

you are out of your mind if you think either xbox or sony had a shot at making a decent console APU with nvidia.

-nvidia sucks at CPUs and is only now catching up, and not with x86 but with ARM. So no back compat with PS4/XBO, the only APUs they have are mobile level shits
-nvidia charges an arm and a leg and aren't that interested in console level chips because they don't make much money compared to their professional stuff. the only reason nintendo got nvidia is because they had a bunch of tegra processors that no one wanted and they needed to unload.
-welcome to $1000 consoles

 

[KnittedKnight]

I did not suggest Sony go with Nvidia. Gotta re read the strawman you're arguing against.

 

[Satoru]

Years of talking to retail workers. Even with games, the average consumer walking into a store isn't very aware of what is going on.

Your experience matters little. It's called argument from authority, look it up.

This is a survey conducted by Slickdeals in 2022 that showed 73% of Americans make impulse purchases at an average of $314 a month

This survey matters fuck all without more information. Who replied to it? What's the demographic? What's the average price per product category (not an average of all products)?

Also, it mentions that the average price per month is $314, whereas the maximum per product is an average of $310. Guess what, both are under the price of a Series X, even with your magical discounts.

So those 28% in consumer electronics suddenly turn into a much smaller pool, and we don't know the demographics for them, unless I missed them. But good try.

Here's another about retail vs online but it isn't video game focused https://chainstoreage.com/survey-ph... impulse purchasing,from the survey are below

The above is more general and not focused on holiday shopping, but we also have years and years of data that shows there is a reason why Sony and Microsoft have been cutting their prices in December over the past generation, in the lead up to Christmas. Before, consoles were price cut before the holidays and retailers would just bundle items at most for Black Friday. Then the consoles started seeing official bundles/price discounts for Black Friday, then it became price cuts for both Black Friday and then the few weeks up to Christmas. The idea is to get an impulsive purchase made for your product over the competition.

That "study" is even worse. You've got confirmation bias, and it shows. Again, what are the demographics? What's the actual average cost of products being bought? What is the purpose of consumer electronic products being bought? Are we talking a majority on phones? Earbuds? Consoles? TVs?

On the other hand, what you said about price cuts is inconsequential to our conversation here. The Xbox failed to move substantially more units at $350 (on other chains other than GameStop) when compared to last year during a so called shortage. If you fail to move units at $350, you're still above the price point customers are willing to pay, meaning that a decrease from $400 to $350 will be mostly irrelevant. Again, supply and demand, something you've revealed time and again you do not understand.

Even then, my "theory" isn't one, but reality. How would you explain all the Series X that were purchased from the time of December 1 to, what, the 16th, outside of Walmart, when Walmart had the best deal of $349 while other stores were at $499? Or that every retailer saw sales increase at $349 even though Walmart had already been selling the X at $349 for weeks? Sales didn't dry up anywhere because one retailer had a great deal, and sales went up everywhere that dropped to $349.

I don't need to explain, you do, since these are your claims. Your explanations so far fall short and are easily picked apart.

Also, it's $499 now? Your tweet says $399, so pick a number a stop moving the goalpost.

Also this forum will never accept basic information that Series X was supply constrained in the US up to June 2023 and will never understand what supply/demand actually looks like in practice. It's ignored or outright dismissed every piece of evidence that isn't even from me as well.

This is rich considering you do not understand how supply and demand works. If the Xbox was supply constrained, and by supply constrained we must clarify that the market demands more units than those currently available, then the price point would naturally move up. This is how Sony managed to move units even with bundles reaching $550 and above (at least in Europe, we had bundles at 650€ IIRC).

Naturally, if the Xbox was indeed supply constrained, bundles would have flown out of shelves since they had a small premium of 10%. Guess what, they didn't, as we've repeatedly told you. They didn't because the market did not demand the product, and was unwilling to pay a small premium to get it.

This is basic economics, and you failed.

Again: Sony, while PS5 supply constrained, was selling out the product at a premium via bundles. Microsoft, while the Xbox was supposedly supply constrained, was not moving the same bundles with a similar premium.

The former is supply constrained, the later is not supply constrained.

Here, educate yourself:

The law of demand holds that the demand level for a product or a resource will decline as its price rises, and rise as the price drops.

Law of Supply and Demand in Economics: How It Works

The law of supply and demand explains how changes in a product's market price relate to its supply and demand.

www.investopedia.com

 

[Gamernyc78]

 

[JAHGamer]

even $400 is still too much, he's asking Microsoft to eat billions in losses every year GamePass's stagnant growth doesn't justify that

 

[KnittedKnight]

even $400 is still too much, he's asking Microsoft to eat billions in losses every year GamePass's stagnant growth doesn't justify that

We don't exactly know how much it cost to produce an Xbox Series in Year 3? Or do we?

PS5 was profitable since very early in the gen. Xbox Series has also prob achieved profitability for the $500 unit price. However $100 drop is a steep drop. Thus the question is how cheaper it has gotten to manufacture one - $30 cheaper? $50 cheaper? $100 cheaper?

The sales show that the market is already rejecting the console at the $500 price point, and same for Series S at OG price point. With the Switch 2 and Pro coming.... the squeeze is gonna be even tighter. There is only one way to combat that decline cause if MS just sits back you'll end up with a capped and dead console. If Sony starts to match them on the price cut ladder - or at least shadow them, MS is also fucked. Well they're fucked anyway this exercise is posited cause PS5 is cheaper to manufacture. The S never gets the full low cost advantage cause the Switch is there, and the high end Series gets creamed by the PS5. They're royally fucked. But that's what they get for being dogshit. In many ways lucky due to Year 1/2 shortage. This could have happened much earlier in the cycle.

I think the Series X revision with no disc drive can't come soon enough for them for that reason as well as to give marketing a fresh chance to stretch the product legs and somehow make it all the way to year 6. They need those manufacturing savings where they can get them. Still rooting for their failure cause fuck digital-only consoles, but yeah - Fuck em.

 

[KiryuRealty]

Looking a LOT like the Saturn and Dreamcast death spirals now.

 

[Jim Ryan]

The panic!

There is a sense of inevitability, isn't there?

 

[KnittedKnight]

The panic!

There is a sense of inevitability, isn't there?

One of the turfers favorite words: inevitable. Ironic.

 

[JAHGamer]

We don't exactly know how much it cost to produce an Xbox Series in Year 3? Or do we?

PS5 was profitable since very early in the gen. Xbox Series probably dropped into that range as well for the $500 unit price. $100 drop is however a steep drop. Thus the question is how cheaper it has gotten to manufacture one - $30 cheaper? $50 cheaper? $100 cheaper?

The sales and market is already rejecting the console at the $500 price point, and same for Series S at OG price point. There is only one way to combat that decline, otherwise end up with a capped and dead console.

Only 1 year ago did Phil say they lose $100-$200 per console at $300/$500 respectively. Sony has been doing constant hardware revisions since day 1, which is what let them become profitable relatively early on. Xbox hasn't done a single revision, so I doubt much has changed. Also in their last quarterly report, AMD said that they're losing money on custom gaming chips, which 99% chance means Series consoles. If AMD is losing money, then Xbox is definitely losing a considerable amount. At $150/$350 now, it's significantly worse.

Xbox Loses As Much As $200 On Every Xbox It Sells, Phil Spencer Says

Microsoft expects to make back the money through sales of games and accessories.

www.gamespot.com

 

[Jim Ryan]

One of the turfers favorite words: inevitable. Ironic.

I'm quite big on irony, especially when it's in my favour.

But I see some fanboys still in denial, saying consoles are antiquated and Xbox are just so far ahead of the curb.

I have to laugh.

 

[KnittedKnight]

I'm quite big on irony, especially when it's in my favour.

But I see some fanboys still in denial, saying consoles are antiquated and Xbox are just so far ahead of the curb.

I have to laugh.

ahead of the curve to extinction....

 

[Satoru]

But I thought the 350 price point allowed for so many more sales, and that GameStop was causing issues with the 400 prince point?

Damn, seems like the market doesn't care about either 350 or 400. Demand is so small that further price cuts are needed.

Supply and demand is beautiful, and another day goes by where welfare is schooled by IconEra.