How does XBox One combat the $100 price difference from PS4? (1 Viewer)

It's been widely discussed that the $100 XBox One price difference from PS4 would have an affect on sales. While MS has yet to publish sales numbers for the XBox One since Jan, PS4 has said that they are north of 6M units WW. Usually a company doesn't post sales numbers when there isn't something positive to say.

A move to combat that seems to be bundling with the same $499 price point. Today Microsoft starts sales of $500 Xbox One Forza 5 Bundle.

Kind of a rip-off for early adopters like me that bought an XBox One, but given the lack of game titles, don't use it much.

Any of the "late adopters" going to bite on this new pack-in incentive?

I bought the Titanfall pack for my nephews. We will get a TON more Xbox use in the next 3 weeks than I have on the 3 months prior.

Kevin Collins said:

It's been widely discussed that the $100 XBox One price difference from PS4 would have an affect on sales. While MS has yet to publish sales numbers for the XBox One since Jan, PS4 has said that they are north of 6M units WW. Usually a company doesn't post sales numbers when there isn't something positive to say.

A move to combat that seems to be bundling with the same $499 price point. Today Microsoft starts sales of $500 Xbox One Forza 5 Bundle.

Kind of a rip-off for early adopters like me that bought an XBox One, but given the lack of game titles, don't use it much.

Any of the "late adopters" going to bite on this new pack-in incentive?

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That's what I thought. For all of us that paid the $70 for Forza day one, it's kind of a kick in the pants, but eh. Forza has also been one of the few games I thought really worked for me. The XBOX has been full of games that have just not been very good. Ryse is beautiful, but the control setup and gameplay is pretty boring. The best thing on XBOX1 right now is either XBOX Fitness - which is truly unique and cool, but it's only free for the first year and then they are switching to a subscription model on it so *eh* and the other is Forza. I enjoy Peggle2 also, but it's a fun but not 'awesome' game. Our XBOX1 spends more time on Xboxie.com (you can navigate to it on your xbox1 web browser and play arcade games of the past on it, like Mario/etc.) then anything else.
I do respect MS for the constant updates.

There were 3 things working against MS and the XBOne this whole time: the price, Kinect, and the DRM measures. They reversed the DRM measures and include games with the purchase of a new console at just $500, so those two issues are kind of resolved. But Kinect...I haven't read anything about a game that says Kinect was the thing that tied the experience together or really made using the console a joy. If anything, it feels awkward, annoying, and doesn't work as advertised. Considering many people don't want it and it is THE reason the console is $100 more than the PS4, it's very unfortunate that it has to be there.

Sony has sold 6 million PS4s, meaning there may be more actually out in the wild that haven't been sold yet. The latest information from MS suggested something under 4 million Xbox Ones even shipped, let alone sold, and they haven't launched in Japan yet, either. Not that it will help them because, frankly, Japan doesn't care about the Xbox brand all that much.

I really don't think Titanfall is going to be a huge turning point for the One. It's available on 360 and PC, so there are better/cheaper options for playing it than an Xbox One. Further, anyone who cares about gaming and Titanfall enough to have even been interested in buying it probably already bought an Xbox One. The fact that it's not an Xbox One only game is hurting them.

Conversely, inFamous: Second Son for PS4 is breaking the preorder sales pace of The Last of Us. This is significant for a couple reasons. First, TLoU was a huge success. Second, it was a late-gen game, meaning the potential customer base was very large compared to an early-gen game. Third, it is a PS4 exclusive; its not on PS3 or PC or anything else. Conversely, Titanfall has been pre-selling well but not great.

Additionally, Titanfall is an Xbox-console exclusive because EA thought that Sony would somehow fail with the PS4 launch and they wanted to put all of their (and Respawn's) efforts into just one version of the game. That seems to have not really happened and it may hurt their sales. Rumor has it that a special edition of Titanfall under a slightly different name (like "Titanfall: Reloaded" or something stupid) will come out this fall on PS4, followed by the eventual sequel on every platform that is still alive.

I like saying "Xbox On" and "Xbox Off" but that's about it...

At this point in the console wars I doubt that a $100 price difference will be the determining factor for very many purchases. Unless it's being bought as a gift, people get the system that's compatible with the games that they want to play. People who are concerned about the price are likely casual gamers, and they won't be picking up either console until the base price drops a time or two.

I'm not much of a gamer (not beyond Super Mario Bros) anyway, but I was curious about a couple things with the Xbox One/PS4 that maybe someone here can answer... (I've used a PS3 for watching discs and streaming before, so I'm at least a little familiar with that machine)

I've read that neither system supports 3D, and that neither is backwards compatible. So if you're a big PS3 user, for example, none of that will work on your new system. Seems kinda weird to me that these new state of the art systems can't play old games, and can't play 3D even though the older machines can. Is that something that has bothered gamers much?

Josh Steinberg said:

I've read that neither system supports 3D, and that neither is backwards compatible. So if you're a big PS3 user, for example, none of that will work on your new system. Seems kinda weird to me that these new state of the art systems can't play old games, and can't play 3D even though the older machines can. Is that something that has bothered gamers much?

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It bothers me because they could be backward compatible. They choose not to have that feature so they can release older games games for digital download, and you can pay to own it....again. I own the PS4 system, and I can tell you the dashboard interface is archaic, the Sega Dreamcast(1999) had a better web browser and the Blu-Ray player doesn't come close to the PS3 I bought in 2008
Awesome machine for just game playing video games though.

First off, you are correct that neither console is backward compatible. However, that will be changing sort of. The PS4 is going to get a service called PlayStation Now that allows you to stream PS3 games through the internet. There are 2 reasons the PS4 doesn't play PS1/2/3 games. The first is that the hardware is completely different from those consoles. The PS2 had a PS1 literally built inside of it in order to let it play PS1 games and the launch PS3 had a full PS2 inside of it for the same reason. (PS1 games are playable on all PS3s through software emulation.) The second reason the PS4 doesn't play older games is because Sony supposedly has PS1 and PS2 emulators working on the PS4 that they could release in the future, whether for free or for some amount of money, but they were not ready by the time the console launched and were not their primary focus in the last year or so. But the PS4 is absolutely not capable of emulating a PS3 so the only solution is PS Now. That service should be launching this summer and will most likely offer a subscription (something like $15/month for access) or a la carte (say $5 for one game to have it for a limited time, like a rental). Sony has only announced that the service is working (the beta testing is going on right now) but no details on pricing has been announced.

In regards to 3D, I believe the PS4 may support 3D blurays but no games currently have 3D. It absolutely could, technically, but either they haven't worked on the feature enough to start using it or just nothing uses it so far. That said, the PS3 had a lot of 3D games a couple years ago but I don't know if anything released this past fall had 3D, so it looks like the industry as a whole is kind of dropping it. I have a 3DTV so I'm a little disappointed myself.