High quality posters like you are the reason I come to neogaf.
Thank you very much for the compliment, you're a poster whose perspective I consider quite valuable as well.
I think what might be happening is that Microsoft discounted the price of the XSX to 400 dollars, but retailers don't want to be left holding the bag on inventory and have further discounted it, with Walmart going a step further maybe because they have more inventory.
It'll be interesting to say the least because you can expect that if the discount period ends, XSX sales are going to dry up. Anyone who didn't buy one for 340 at Walmart for the holidays, clearly doesn't want one for 500 in April 2024.
Will retailers take additional shipments of XSX if they're taking a loss trying to get rid of inventory now?
Or like you said is this Microsoft's pattern of getting rid of inventory before discontinuation? I don't think we got a clear answer from the video game awards of what their strategy is and the fact that Blade wasn't announced or confirmed as exclusive puts a lot of things into question. Pretty sure all of the 3rd party stuff they showed was multiplatform, except for maybe OD and that could just be the phasing out of older arrangements.
The next 12 months will be VERY interesting for the industry.
I think it's either Microsoft itself liquidating all of its stock on the market, or things have gotten so bad that retailers are demanding heavy price cuts to reduce their inventory or they'd just send back the majority of it.
The issue now is, how do you proceed post-Holiday sales? Do you just jack the price up to 500 again? That would just create a further incentive to not buy the machines unless a similar cut happens again.
This part is more anecdotal, but the astounding lack of Xbox shelfspace in the big markets is an absolute indication that whatever their strategy is, it's not really working.
As a side note, I think their failure this generation is far more interesting to discuss than last gen because it's just so multi-faceted, whereas for last gen, everyone can just point to the infamous Don Mattrick video and call it a day.
But here there's a lot to debate: Was Gamepass a net positive or a net negative? Was the mass purchasing of publishers and studios a net positive, or did it just accelerate the need for the division to start actually earning money? Was the ecosystem a good idea overall or partially or not at all?
Wow it is so surprisingly refreshing to hear normal people talk about games.
It's simply astounding how bad the Xbox image is amongst normies in general. I have never ever seen any normie ask me if Xbox is worth buying, anyone talking about Xbox is either neck-deep in the "community" or just isn't talking about it at all.
It doesn't help that Xbox's messaging is almost exclusively tailored to please idiots like Colt Eastwood or Timdog.
99% of everything interesting coming out for PS5 is on PS4 (lol) and/or PC. Fuck videogames.
