My argument is that the Series S is selling. Some people around here are saying that Series S is gathering dust on retailer shelves because nobody wants it.
The reality is that it's consistently one of the top ten selling products in the Video Game section on Amazon. People refuse to accept that because it's not sold out, for some reason.
Well it all boils into this:
USA vs. rest of the world.
Using USA as only data point is biased, because that is the home town for xbox -> xbox always sells there well, and is equal competitor of playstation.
Using rest of the world as only data point is biased, because xbox is not really that popular outside of USA -> xbox almost always sells worse than playstation, isnt seen as strong or popular brand, xbox is basically seen as "spare option" for kids & fifa players, because playstation is just so much stronger.
2 completely different perspectives, and if people from either one wont acknowedge or know the whole picture, the view from other side sounds like bullshit.
from USA view it seems to be really difficult to see, that xbox isnt real competitor or equal thing
from outside of USA view it seems to be difficult to see that xbox would be anything but smaller spare option instead of serious competitor.
And if we use an average, it still does sound wrong because one side says "xbox is sold out!, this cant be true!" and one side says "but xbox is gathering dust, that cant be true!".
So, maybe only option is to talk USA market and global market separately?
Xbox is part of American culture like mac&cheese, while outside of USA I havent ever heard anyone eating that stuff, yet on online conversations USA folks seems to think that mac&cheese is some kind of universally popular thing
Playstation is part of european culture really strongly, but their competitor (xbox) really isnt a cultural thing to us.
Here in my country series S have been available basically from day one on stores, never seen them sold out. Series x have been available from time to time, and now it have had maybe 1-2 weeks of order time in few store chains in my country. And situation is similar around EU from what I have heard.
So is it series S a failure, because it does gather dust on Eu stores? Or is it a success because it is sold out in USA?
I think it is success and failure in the same time, it is success at USA where it fits the culture better, and failure on EU, because from the start it werent seen as part of the gaming culture, to have a chance.
Because:
if it is seen as a failure -> easy to see it as low specced machine which also makes devs to do extra work, even when people didnt want the system.
if it is seen as a success -> easy to see that this slow specced machine adds more to gaming than takes away by the extra work.
As long as USA vs. rest of the world continues without both sides really trying to understand the whole picture, conversation doesnt go anywhere.
But I think that series S will last the gen, because MS started with it, so it is difficult to remove it. And it will be wildly popular on USA, but not so much out of it. Kind of like xbox one digital edition (SAD), shops had to discount it to 99€ here and still it didnt sell that well.