Quote:
Originally Posted by Vallen Chaos Valiant
Not to mention 1.6 million units of Xbox1 is not enough to cover the production costs of a AAA game. A new Halo selling 1.6 million would be a miserable failure. Halo 3 sold 8.1 million copies.
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Comparison to SimCity sales would be a tad unfair. Like it or not, XB1 will definitely sell more than 1.6 million units.
Let's make some assumptions. Assume 50% of all Halo 3 buyers are die-hard fans, (unlikely ) who will definitely buy an XB1 just to play the next Halo. That would be 4 million units. Throw in a few other franchises, it would come to around 5-6 million.
After that... what?
Microsoft's 1st-party studios isn't as strong as it used to be, whereas Sony own studios seem to be doing very well, as some of them have separate teams for different games now.
3rd party exclusives can only last for so long. We saw that happen in the previous gen. And ultimately, the less that the XB1 sells, the less bargaining or value their exclusivity deal can offer to 3rd parties. The merit of being an XBox exclusive would lose a lot of shine if there's insufficient install bases to move sales.
From a non-gaming perspective...
TV stuff. Google TV failed. Cheaper alternatives failed. There is no proven market for a $499 media box. And there's no way Apple & Google will allow Microsoft to win in that space, nevermind cable companies.
NFL. I don't know about America, but I've never felt that the market for "exclusive content only available in whatever" is a big one. It's only the die-hards that would crave for things like this, just like exclusive DLC items, etc. NFL will never offer something truly special and unprecedented only for XB1, without charging them insane amounts of money.
Skype. TwitchTV. Bing. Internet Explorer. Windows apps. The idea of 'on-screen multitasking with voice and gesture' just kills me. Literally everyone in the media industry is talking about the '2nd screen' via smartphones & tablets, and that feels way more efficient and realistic in real-life use compared to gesturing and talking to your TV to do it.
Kinect. I've no doubt it's an excellent piece of hardware... Only 30 million bought it for the 360, and I suspect at least 5-10 million were bought for non-gaming purposes. Games with gesture controls have not shown any success. No 3rd party AAA games use them outside voice recognition.
And there's one huge problem, that I can't believe Microsoft failed to recognise... Kinect supports
SIX languages.
SIX. No wonder Poland didn't enter the launch list, Kinect doesn't recognise Polish. And many other languages.