4. Casual Consumer
Remember how we all made fun of the Wii when it first came out? "Who is that for? No one wants that!" we all said. The thing had unimpressive hardware and seemed to be entirely based around a motion control gimmick we all shunned. It then went on to sell around 100 million consoles. While we were all agreeing with each other on the internet, we forgot one thing. That there are other human beings in the world. Human beings who will buy games, not go onto internet forums and yell about their opinions. They are the people who don't necessarily care about the medium for artistic integrity, high end graphics or really great AAA experiences. They outnumber us gamers by a lot due to mobile game and social gaming exploding. Yes, we all seem to have forgotten about the casual consumer. I am not going to go as far as to say I think the Xbox One will become the next Wii. It won't have the support in Japan like the Wii did. However, it is entirely possible that the system could become a big presence in the west. Most people I have talked to who are not gamers have actually been fairly excited about the Xbox One. It is transcending what a games console is and is now more an entertainment box that can also game. Many have said, "It does exactly what a smart TV does". That is true, but the large majority of a consumers don't own Smart TVs yet. Microsoft are still hitting this market pretty early and the Xbox One could become a part of many living rooms before they are as widespread as HD TVs. It is also likely that the Xbox One won't cost as much as a Smart TV and essentially is an add-on that updates a TV. That could be golden for a consumer base that are currently happy with their current home entertainment system. Like I said, I don't expect it to quite get to Wii levels of popularity, but I definitely think it has more than a fighting chance to compete with Sony and Nintendo. Just to reiterate with some evidence,
this happened today. On top of that, I called a few Game retailers asking about how the Xbox One was doing on Pre-orders. They said it was doing "very well", even implying that it was doing better than the Playstation4. Of course they were a little resistant to give me specific numbers, so take that with a pinch of salt.