“Xbox One left a bad taste in many gamers’ mouths after a very, very rocky launch”
How many times is this topic going to be repeated? Like it’s that major a reason Xbox One performed the way it did.
Xbox One still sold more at launch than Xbox 360 just like how PS3 also sold more at launch than 360 despite people’s divisive opinion about it out of the gate. Despite all this you rarely see people talking negative about 360’s launch sales, even though it sold less than the other two starting out. Xbox One still sold at a faster rate than its predecessor for 3 1/2 years. That’s long enough to show that the launch isn’t that major a factor in contributing to XO’s overall sales. Yes the original policies were absurd but what’s even more absurd is neglecting how it still sold at a better rate than its predecessor for 3.5 years.
Also also a controversial launch doesn’t automatically spell doom and gloom for a system. As I said earlier many like to bash PS3’s launch for differing reasons yet it still ended up being one of the best selling systems of all time. Regardless of how Xbox One was received it wasn’t going to perform as well as its predecessor since it wouldn’t have as many advantages. I doubt even Xbox Series X will perform as well commercially as Xbox 360.
In the bigger picture even if Microsoft did everything perfectly for XO from day one thei brand doesn’t have as strong appeal as Sony’s, so it’s not like they had that strong a chance to come out on top. The only brand Xbox has been able to outperform is Nintendo and even that track record is uneven.
Xbox’s peak performance is 84-86 million while PlayStation can more times than not surpass 100 million units. I doubt even Xbox Series X will perform as well commercially as Xbox 360. The best XO could’ve hoped for was to sell 50-70 million because it wouldn’t perform as well in NA(not even PS4 will sell as many units in NA as 360 did) and the Xbox brand still isn’t as strong in other markets. The same goes for XSX’s future performance.
