[ad_1]
A few days after Microsoft’s new Xbox, Sony’s Playstation 5 is on the market today. But rival Nintendo is also catching up. Who will win the Christmas run in the billion dollar market for gaming consoles?
By Thomas Spinnler, boerse.ARD.de
The “gamers” have been waiting for this moment for months: last week Microsoft launched the new Xbox, today Sony is following in Germany with the Playstation 5. Both Microsoft’s Xbox Series X and Playstation 5 cost € 499 in this country.
Both manufacturers also offer unitless versions. The games must then be downloaded from the net. In Microsoft, the model called Xbox S will cost 299 euros, the digital edition of PS 5 is available for 399 euros. Now Sony and Microsoft are hoping for the lucrative Christmas deal.
Sony wants to keep the lead
In principle, both new consoles do not offer groundbreaking changes. Obviously, performance has increased significantly – companies want to score especially with topics like 4K resolution, graphics quality, or the number of images being tracked across the screen per second (FPS).
For Sony, it is especially about maintaining the advantage over Microsoft that has been developed in recent years. The previous model, the Playstation 4, has been sold around 114 million times since it was launched in 2013. According to experts’ estimates, it is about twice the size of Microsoft’s old Xbox One. Microsoft does not publish exact figures. Above all, the wide range of exclusive games has made the Playstation attractive to many gamers.
Microsoft is stepping up
But Microsoft is updating. A few months ago, the Zenimax video game company was acquired for $ 7.5 billion, causing a bang in the industry. Zenimax is the parent company of game developer Bethesda Softworks and is responsible for successful games such as “Doom”, “Fallout” and “The Elder Scrolls”. If games of this caliber were to be marketed and produced exclusively for Xbox in the future, this would be a strong argument in favor of Microsoft’s console variant.
Furthermore, Microsoft’s “Game Pass” subscription service is ultimately more interesting than Sony’s “Playstation Now” because the games are more up to date and can be played not only on consoles, but also on other devices such as PCs or smartphones.
Some analysts therefore expect Microsoft to catch up with its new models. Ampere Analysis experts predict that the Xbox could be sold 13.5 million times by the end of next year. For the PS5, 17.9 million sales are expected. This is much more, not double.
Great expectations from Nintendo
However, the competitor Nintendo could do the race over the Christmas period. The Switch console was released in 2017, but the new one doesn’t always appeal to buyers – one of the advantages of Nintendo is that the range of games with exclusive and popular brands is considerably wider. Of course, neither Microsoft nor Sony currently has a large catalog of games for the new models. Many interested parties may then decide to wait for the offer to expand before buying.
Additionally, analysts are expecting delivery bottlenecks for both new consoles and all things during the all-important Christmas business. For example, analyst Morris Garrard of consulting firm FutureSource believes that despite the great demand, it may be difficult to acquire a console in the coming months.
Nintendo probably doesn’t have the problem: on the occasion of the latest quarterly data, the Japanese video game company had massively raised its forecast for sales figures for the Switch console. Sales of 24 million units are expected for the current year (at the end of March), five million more than previously assumed. Due to the Corona Pandemic, customers want to spend their time indoors as comfortably as possible.
The latest consoles of their kind?
Perhaps, however, the console competition between the big three still points to the past. There are now experts who assume that current playground equipment may be the last of its kind. Given the rapid pace of technological change in the industry, it is questionable how far the console business can go.
Because the competition has long offered alternatives: Google offers the “Stadia” cloud gaming service. Amazon is also working to popularize its “Luna” cloud gaming variant.
Users no longer need to purchase individual games or have game consoles, but can access games directly via a cloud from devices of their choice. You don’t need powerful hardware or consoles for this.
Those: boerse.ard.de
.
[ad_2]
Source link
