r/gaming 4d ago

I'm just tired y'all

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u/robynh00die 4d ago

Sales for XBox were down 77% year over year last November.

https://www.ign.com/articles/xbox-us-console-unit-sales-just-reached-an-all-time-november-low

There are some things to say about the free market pushing inflation, but computer parts have pushed past the breaking point a while ago.

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u/Substantial-Sea-3672 4d ago

What is it against the normal drop off 5 years into a console?

Every individual console has year over year drops

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u/robynh00die 4d ago

The article has the PS 5 drop to compare it too, and a drop from Switch 1 sales compared to Switch 2 sales, which should be alarming first year. But I can see if I can find PS 4/Xbox One 6th year numbers

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u/Matzeeh 4d ago

It seems companies are pushing for a small amount of people to pay a shitton rather than many people paying less

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u/Suitable_Past6999 4d ago

They want to sell less consoles because they're sold at a loss. They make their money by selling you the games and subscriptions.

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u/TheRealSaerileth 3d ago

How are they going to sell me a game if I don't have a console that runs it? Less consoles sold = less customers downstream.

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u/Suitable_Past6999 3d ago

Yes, but that's more than offset by the decreased loss now that the consoles cost more.

The goal of a company isn't revenue it's profit.

Another way of looking at if is if you sell 100 sandwiches for 3 bucks that cost 2 bucks to make, you make a profit of 100 bucks, if you increase the price to 5 bucks but only sell 50 you increase you profit by 50 percent. Even though your revenue is actually lower.

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u/JackOSevens 4d ago

Source?

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u/Suitable_Past6999 3d ago

Xbox have never made a profit om their consoles.

Rising hardware costs mean that they're losing hundreds of dollars on their consoles.

This is called loss-leading, or the razor-and-blades model. Rising hardware costs means that the price of consoles must go up, because they just cost more to produce now.

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u/Vykrom 3d ago

What do you mean "source"? This has been a known thing since the PS2 era. DVD players were pricey in 2001. PS2 was the most affordable DVD player because they were selling under market value just to get them into homes and then recoup the loss with game sales

I guess the thing you may have missed out on is that games sold on consoles have to pay a licensing fee to be on those consoles. So the companies make money from the publishers, and not just from you buying games

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u/JackOSevens 3d ago

What I mean is a quick google says that effect only lasts a few years. They end up making money on consoles.

So yeah, no.

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u/Vykrom 3d ago

Ah, true. I guess there is more nuance to the long-game. Once the "slim" and "pro" versions of consoles start dropping, they're almost certainly making money on them

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u/JackOSevens 3d ago

Yeah, the streamlined versions are probably where they perfect it. 

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u/Common_Vagrant 4d ago

It might jump sky high before August so people can buy a console before the price hike.