He is right and it's not bad at all for MS
Far the contrary. All the conference would be about sales and nothing else. Anyway it needs just a month ahead to ps4 in NPD and you see how suddenly sales will be important again (it happened not too much time ago).
Console hardware margin is so small it hardly makes sense to bank on hardware sales to make big profits. Sony realized this aswell this gen and Nintendo is also starting to realize services are where you make the money.
Yeah, his statement is basically the equivalent to "I was holding back.I haven't shown you my true power, yet"
Restera would be Xbox "bias" so they'd have that going for them.
No one says that hardware sales are EVERYTHING when it comes to console buisness - but you really think that Sony would make as much money on PSN right now if they hadnt sold 100m PS4 consoles but Xbox like sales ? Or that Nintendo would have record software sales on Switch if it sold like the WiiU ?
Oh I perfectly get it. But I have learned the attitude of the company with such stuff.
And how thats disputes my point? On PC they will still loose 30% from 3rd party and GOLD subs. And dont forget that PC is far more saturated with other subscription services. They dont need to worry about other 30 sub services on their own hardware
Why? They have the only service on the market and Streaming is going to be niche for awhile, even MATT NPD guy said as much....I think some of you think Pr is more important then it is.
Because they already have a functioning version of what Google and Microsoft are constantly referring to "the future of entertainment" or whatever. If they used the same language but then added on "and it's already here on playstation" they could make the others look really bad. Like the existence of psnow kind of invalidates everything Phil says here.
He would still be saying this as profit margin on consoles is small.
I thin you are over thinking PR, most people don't care or even know, Streaming is not going to be big for awhile.
PR is important. Even if you don't think it's going to be important for a while, you can just completely shutdown competitors by saying "oh, we've had that for years" when they unveil all of their new stuff.
None of them ever "banked on hardware sales to make big profits" quite the contrary - outside of this gen the norm was to loose money on hardware.
The point is preventing the competition from starting something similar for as long as possible, especially if the service is doing well.
That sounds like your conclusion is that Game Pass is not doing exactly well. If that's your impression, then maybe it is Sony's impression as well. But if it is actually doing outstandingly well, then why not try to keep this (false) impression up for as long as possible? If I were Phil, I would continue to say nothing with a lot of words for quite some time.
Xbox don't seem interested in VR at all, I think the only way it get's to Xbox is through some 3rd party VR headset getting Xbox support, XB1 is probably too under powered for it to be worth it for the VR Platform holders currently.
There's no cost to console streaming. You're playing your games on your Xbox through your internet connection.
I don't think it could be. One of the reasons why Game Pass (and similar services) have been able to ramp up quickly has been that the games industry has managed, over the past few decades, to mostly minimise regional obstacles. TV hasn't progressed to that point and competition for exclusive content in that area is intensifying. Microsoft can go to publishers and put together a service that brings the world a list of hundreds of games that's mostly the same across every country. They couldn't do that for TV. Even market leaders like Netflix can't do that for TV.
Microsoft did have to change strategy, yes. However, new technologies and new market realities mean that they'd have changed strategies anyway. Even if Microsoft had won this generation and sold 150m Xbox Ones, their strategy for next generation would look very similar to their current strategy for next generation.
I agree. It's a service that I'm increasingly preferring to PlayStation Plus. For all the talk about xCloud and Stadia, they're still just ramping up to do what Sony are already doing. However, Sony have allowed themselves to be perceived as the third-place player in a market where they're the only company with an existing product. That's a little understandable if there's some kind of big overhaul coming to PlayStation Now as part of the generational transition and the swap to Azure, and I'm sure they'll want to talk more about PlayStation Now when that happens, but they could afford to do a bit of that talking now instead.
