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The new console generation is among us.
How are the new consoles holding up so far and with new systems what problems might arise. Lets break it down and see what is going on so far.
PS4 - So last week the PS4 released and within 24 hours sold over 1 million units world wide. But with the new system hitting the market, we have seen plenty of videos of the dreaded blue light of death as well as a lot of systems having HDMI port problems. But despite these issues how do you think the PS4 will hold up in the months or years ahead. Microsoft had some of the worse marketing in recent years with the announcement of the Xbox one and its shady business practices. Sony saw this and delivered some of the best marketing to launch there system in the right direction. They portrayed them self as for the gamer while Microsoft looked like they could care less about the Gamer and just wanted your money. Sony is off to fantastic start and for the most part there marketing has been on point for the most part.
So how is the Xbox One holding up?
Xbox One - Just like the PS4 the Xbox one has sold over a million units within the first 24 hours surpassing it's Xbox 360 counter part, despite the $500 dollar price tag. That is $500 million dollars in profit in 24 hours which is nuts. But with the release it has also had its share of problems. We are already seeing videos of disc drive problems or systems scratching disc. There has also been a lot of faulty power supplies. But despite these problems how do you think it will hold out with that extra $100 dollar price point over PlayStation?
Do you think some of the moves they made in marketing earlier in the year will affect them now that they have changed most of those policies such as the online requirement and the restrictions on used games and such. I still have people asking me if they have alot of those policies despite them changing that stuff back in June or July. With that said they have changed a lot since E3 and one of the things they changed was Microsoft's original requirement for the kinect sensor to always be hooked up to your console in order for it to work. It almost sounded ridiculous that it would be a requirement for it to work, but why would they change it and let us use the console without it? To narrow down that answer it pretty much comes down to Sony. If Sony takes off in sales in the months to come you can easily see Microsoft dropping the kinect bundle and dropping the price to $400 dollars. The Kinect is what is driving that $100 dollar increase and in the long run would of hurt Microsoft if they tried to make such large price drops to compete with Sony while still having it bundled.
So where is the Wii U in all of this?
Wii U - They Wii U also had reports of messed up HDMI ports as well as internet connectivity issues when it launched last year. But where is it today? How does it hold up with the other two consoles? Nintendo had a full year head start on its competition, did it manage to grab the consumer?
Sales on the Wii U have been very slow, the system as far as I know has still yet to sell over 4 million units within the one year it has been available. With the PS4 and Xbox One shifting 1 million units each within the first 24 hours, can we safely assume the Wii U might be looked at as a secondary console? We can only hope things change for the Wii U soon. One system that started off in a similar fashion as the Wii U was the 3DS. The 3DS was a huge burden on Nintendo when it launched do to sluggish sales and even helped caused a huge profit loss in 2011. Nintendo took action and with a price drop and some more desirable games releasing sales took off and the 3DS is now a big money maker for Nintendo. I can see the sales of the Wii U heading in the right direction once we see some more desirable titles like Super Smash Bros. This year we will see the new Mario game, Donkey Kong and games like Pikman 3 that has already released that might help boost sales for the system.
So as we can see there is a lot of unanswered questions but things will change. Sony has already reported that less then 1% of the consoles that were shipped out has been reported as faulty and with the new Xbox One we won't know how big of a burden the disc drive error will be til a little way down the road.. The Wii U I think has a bright future despite poor sales and overall I think this is going to be a interesting console war. I know everyone has there favorites but I am a adopter of them all because in the long run they all will have there Pros and Cons.
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Just to clarify, Microsoft didn't make $500 million in profit. They sold $500 million dollars worth of merchandise which equates to $500 million in revenues. I wouldn't be surprised if the expenses related to making and selling the One cost more than $500 million, so I assume Microsoft has a negative profit on the One so far. The same applies to Sony, and likely Nintendo.
I wouldn't be surprised if Sony's estimate of 1% for defective units is correct. 1% of 1 million units is 10,000 units, and given how vocal the internet is that number seems accurate. It's likely a similar number for Microsoft as well, and a reasonable amount of failures for such a massively produced high tech item. For long term problems like disc drive failure, we'll have to keep an eye out over the next few years to accurately determine failure rate. Sony, and especially Microsoft, came into this generation knowing fully well how expensive console replacement costs can be. I would hope that both companies put a better focus on quality in the PS4 and One.
I look forward to this console generation. I like Sony's attitude change from last generation and how Microsoft is trying to place all of your home entertainment options in a single box. I'm sure the recent Wii U price drop will help Nintendo put a few million units in people's homes in the coming months, but I think Sony and Microsoft will end up with much higher software attach rates.
Great article tadpole! Since you now have all three consoles, which has been your favorite so far?
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Great point Blacklist. That was poorly written with the 500 million in profit. As far as I know the Nintendo Wii was the first console since the original nintendo to actually make profit off the system its self at launch. I very much doubt any of the newer systems of this generation is making profit off of the system its self.
With the fail rate I am really interested to see how Microsoft is doing. At the military base I am at the shopping center on base only received 10 Xbox Ones total. Out of those three of them had problems. My brother back in the states as also had problems but it was his day one edition controller not working. So I hope it is not that bad across the board but I am sure we will hear all about it in the days to come.
I agree with everything you said about sonys attitude change. The all in one atmosphere of the xbox and the smaller sales of the Wii U. Both the N64 and the Gamecube were behind in terms of the console war. The Wii was dominate in terms of sales because excellent marketing and grabbing the attention of none traditional gamers and such. I think this time around the Wii U will come in third at the end but we will see. I really hope companies like EA starts to support them again soon.
I ordered my PS4 thru Amazon and since I am overseas it is taking a little while to get to me. I have not got my hands on it yet to give it a try but I hope to mess around with it soon. I am really liking the Xbox so far but I need to get use to the menu a little more and the ingame DVR. I actually skyped on the Xbox One today and it works awesome with the kinect gamer so I am happy about that. With the Wii U, I will most likely focus more to console exclusives with it.
I am bigger into FPS games and I loved my 360 for it so I feel I might lean more towards the Xbox One for that aspect. So my opinion might be a little bias towards them but I try not to just favor one system because they are all great in there own way.
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How was the GameCube behind? In sales certainly, but not when it came to graphics it wasn't. Typically the weaker graphical console leads the battle in sales, Wii/PS2/PS1 etc. As for your question, it really is too early to tell what if going to happen. I was wondering if we would see a repeat of gen 6 and have PS4 lead for sales and One and Wii U fight it out for second place, But who knows  Holiday 2014, the picture should be formed by then.
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In units sold is what I was referring to. I personally loved the way the Gamecube looked especially with games like Wind Waker. It was a fantastic system and one of my favorite systems. As for knowing the outcome of the console war or how things with turn out in terms of how well the marketing and such worked out for each system that will be a ways away like you said. But I would love to come back to all the stuff I just wrote here 10 years from now and be like if only we Knew the Wii U was going to become the dominate system of this generation. if only we knew lol
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