PS2 sold 155 million, while Xbox sold 24 million: Huge win for Playstation
PS3 sold 87 million, while Xbox 360 sold 84 million: Basically a tie
PS4 sold 114 million, While Xbox One sold 52 million: Xbox was destroyed
PS5 has now sold about 41 million units, while Xbox has sold 21 million of X & S total.
Is Microsoft making good money on this system? It started out with its new system losing, but its sequel system was very much the equal to PS3. Now, they are completely behind and it doesn’t look like they can catch up.
I believe Microsoft is developing a new Xbox, but is there any chance they quit the hardware market? They must make money on licensing, but it seems like Sony has really won the console war there.
Nintendo feels like it competes entirely outside Sony and Microsoft. Switch has outsold everything except PS2 and the Wii was right up there with PS4 and the original Playstation. I presume Nintendo is just fine even with the one-off failure of the Wii U.
My understanding is Nintendo will likely release Super Switch(Switch 2?) next year and if it offers PS5 level graphics in a still portable system, it will likely be a huge hit.
Not console sales themselves but that’s nothing new. Consoles are often sold at a loss since they make money off the games.
I remember in the 90s working at Toys R Us when the N64 came out, and having the chat with my manager about how that console and others (like PlayStation) didn’t make money, but it didn’t matter because the games were insanely profitable, and the console makers got a cut from each one.
Here’s an article from a couple of years ago.
Microsoft doesn’t have to be #1 in the market to justify staying in it.
So they own 1/3 of the current market, why would they toss that away? This idea that PS is ‘winning’ is kind of ridiculous. This isn’t a football game where the score matters. As long as MS thinks they’re making enough money, they’ll keep making it. MS has been ‘losing’ in this market for over 20 years now, and they don’t appear to be quitting.
I could see Microsoft exiting the hardware market in the sense of pivoting to a streaming-focused thin client kind of console. Microsoft was “losing” so they spent $70 billion of Azure money on Activision. Sony is so worried that they’re opening up crossplay after a decade of rejecting it.
They might not make money off of the console sales, but they still need console sales to be high. Anyone who doesn’t own a Microsoft console won’t be buying any Microsoft-licensed games. And there are costs associated with developing and supporting the consoles, so if the income gets too low, the profits do disappear.
And if you’re behind in the market, there can be feedback effects that push you even further behind. Game makers will naturally want to release their games on the most-popular console, and they’re more likely to release exclusives for that console, and less likely to release exclusives for the other console. People will see their friends playing the more-popular console, and that serves as free advertising. If you can play multiplayer with folks using the same console, but not cross-console, then folks will want the console that lets them play against more people. If there’s any way to resell old games (even if it’s just the legacy games from previous generations that this console is backwards-compatible with), then people will want the console with a bigger used market. All of this would serve to make the more-popular console even more popular, and the less-popular one even less so.
Plus, of course, there’s presumably some reason why the more popular console is more popular to begin with. If you’re the #2 company, you need to figure out what you’re doing wrong, and fix it. And how confident are you that you were right and did manage to fix it?
They sell accessories. Controllers, headsets, SSDs, you name it. They also push snacks and vinyl figurines to go along with your games. I’d imagine they must make some money off of selling gift cards for game platforms, too.
The next generation will be the first where previous huge cross-platform franchises are only available on one. I may switch to MS for the next single player Fallout and I’m sure I am not alone.
But in any case, MS is perfectly happy selling millions of consoles even if someone else is selling more. As long as it turns a profit it won’t care what Sony is doing. It can also afford to make less money on console sales because it’s another way of making its software part of the firmament.
Yes. Especially if you want a physical card. Most companies with digital distribution of media–both Microsoft and Sony included–do not sell physical cards, only digital ones. (Apple is a notable exception. You can get physical Apple gift cards directly from Apple. And, actually, Sony doesn’t sell digital cards directly either. They rely on a third-party for that as well.)
Not Microsoft. If you go to their web site you can order a digital gift card but not a physical one.
Hoopy_Frood didn’t say that the physical gift cards didn’t exist, it’s just that the companies don’t sell them directly. They are sold by someone else.
I can walk into many stores and get a physical Xbox gift card. But not from Microsoft itself.
Can I buy a physical gift card?
Physical gift cards for the online stores can be purchased at top retail outlets.
I see reports of anywhere from 5%-20% per card. That’s about the same as what a retailer would expect from selling computer or game console accessories.
To be fair it’s probably closer to 5% in most cases, but that’s still decent. And I’m talking gift cards in general, not specifically cards for gaming companies.
I used to be an assistant manager at a computer store many years ago and that isn’t a bad margin.
That article is speculation from an outsider who used to run Xbox at Microsoft. But I remember seeing on Reddit earlier this year that Microsoft already announced that they were done with Xbox. I never did see any links to articles; just a bunch of topics in various subreddits with titles like “So now that Microsoft is done with Xbox, what are you going to do?”
Googling around, this article from February 8th explains what I saw on Reddit, but unfortunately doesn’t explain what’s actually happening. It says “there will be a ‘business update event’ next week to address the console’s future”:
And then this 4 minute snippet from a podcast explains what was announced at that business update event, which was just that they are going to be putting four exclusives onto other platforms. But they won’t name those titles, other than to say it’s not Starfield or Indiana Jones. They do say they are titles that are at least a year old.
So I guess that’s what all that reddit chatter was about, and I guess that’s also why it then quickly died down a week later.
