Explain PS4 beating Xbox One in market share

[racketboy]

So I haven't really been paying much attention to this console generation at all.
From a business standpoint, I was curious how the console wars were going.
I remembered the 360 was beating out the PS3 (I guess partially because it came to market first with a solid lineup).
I also had many of my offline acquaintances mention they were in the Xbox One camp, so I was surprised to see that Sony had a healthy market share lead with the PS4.
https://venturebeat.com/2017/03/16/sony ... worldwide/

So what caused this great recovery from Sony?

[dsheinem]

The PS3, last I checked, had reached parity with or just surpassed 360 sales despite its slow start...so "great recovery" is a bit dramatic...

The PS4, from my perspective, does better because it has better exclusives. I could easily get away with owning just a PS4 and a PC and experience like 95% or more of modern gaming. There are not a lot of games I can only play on an X1. Microsoft also shot themselves in the foot for the first year or so of sales by including the Kinect 2.0 as a mandatory part of buying an X1. Most buyers didn't want it or its $100 price increase over the PS4.

[marurun]

The Xbox 360 did better in the US. Nothing Xbox has ever done well in the JPN market. That generation reflected relative power and ease of programming. That's happening again this generation. The PS4 is more powerful and easier to develop for. And now it has enough lead Scorpio will prove too late. Also, Sony has been more aggressive with better exclusives this gen.

[racketboy]

The PS3, last I checked, had reached parity with or just surpassed 360 sales despite its slow start...so "great recovery" is a bit dramatic...

Lol -- using the word "dramatic" seems a bit dramatic

Even if they leveled out (seems like 360 still stayed slightly above), it's still a solid recovery. And after checking stats, it seems that Japan made the large difference there. US was still heavily 360.

I was in the PS3 camp and enjoyed it. I also felt like a minority.

[isiolia]

7th gen I think was a little more than time to market and library - those likely helped, but the PS3 also had a harder architecture to take advantage of, and launched at a much higher price. Sony was coming off of having (still) the best selling console to date, and seemed to assume that customers would line up for whatever they launched and "work more hours" to afford it.

They were pushing home media features in Blu-ray, and the Cell processor in other applications.

More or less, they weren't competitive, and played catch-up for a while.

With the PS4, they came out firing on all cylinders. Great exclusives, great hardware that was very focused on gaming.

Meanwhile, it was MS this time that focused a bit too much elsewhere. Bundling the Kinect was one thing, but it ate into system resources too (since rolled back). It's got media hub features that not everyone uses. The platform itself is good, but generally does lack exclusives.

[racketboy]

Totally makes sense -- thanks!

I do remember much of that at launch and was surprised when most of my acquaintances were still opting for the XB One.

[MrPopo]

Also, when the Xbox One and PS4 were announced it was basically a repeat of Saturn vs. PS1; PS4 was cheaper and Xbox One wasn't as friendly.

[marurun]

Microsoft also has that weird high-speed, low-latency cache that's tiny and hard to use.

[racketboy]

Also, when the Xbox One and PS4 were announced it was basically a repeat of Saturn vs. PS1; PS4 was cheaper and Xbox One wasn't as friendly.

Funny how they don't learn from history, eh?

[marurun]

Look at the PS2! It doesn't get any more unnecessarily complicated than that. But the included DVD capabilities and riding the PS1 wave made it a hit. Sony had every reason to think they could do the exact same thing with the PS3. I mean, included Blu-ray and backwards compatibility with PS2. The PS3 was Sony doing the PS2 all over again.