Phil Spencer made headlines this week where in an interview with VideoGamer, he admitted that he was uncertain if the Xbox One will ever catch up to the PS4 this console generation.
“You know, I don’t know. You know, the length of the generation… They have a huge lead and they have a good product. I love the content, the games line-up that we have.”
Right now, the best case scenario is for Microsoft to pull even with the current rate of sales for PS4, meaning Sony is no longer outselling them two or three to one. To actually surpass them in sales is a feat so monumental it’s almost unthinkable. Not gonna happen.
Sony has scored big hits with smaller games like Rocket League, Until Dawn and SOMA, and has managed to combat Xbox’s exclusives and bundles with a flat $50 price cut for the PS4 just in time for the holiday. And on top of that, Sony still enjoys the position of being the “default” console for so many of the top multiplatform games of the fall. They have deals in place to secure them extra Destiny content and early Call of Duty access. And because they’re simply such a huge chunk of the market, the majority of players are probably going to be buying games like Assassin’s Creed Syndicate, Fallout 4 and Just Cause 3 on PS4. That’s already been the case with Metal Gear Solid 5 and Mad Max.
Everyone can trace back the Xbox One’s problems to E3 2013 where the hottest buzzwords in the industry were “always on” and “disc-based gaming.” Xbox One promised to be the former, and to do away with the later, both of which were concepts consumers, and Sony, rejected wholeheartedly.
Though Xbox One walked back the majority of those two issues before release, they still went ahead with their worst decision of all, the bundling of Kinect with the Xbox One which took a console that consumers were already unsure of and made it cost $100 more than its competition. Eventually, the Kinect was cut and the price was dropped, but it took far, far too long, and it should have never happened in the first place. In my mind, Kinect is nearly the entire reason for the One’s current inability to catch the PS4, a mistake so massive it will reverberate for all 6-10 years of this console generation.
Are Microsoft always going to be trying to catch Sony? Let us know your thoughts….
