As the weather cools around the country and the leaves begin to fall from the trees, stores have already begun stocking the aisles with Christmas decorations even though Halloween is still a couple of weeks away. At this time last year gamers were eagerly awaiting the release of the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One gaming systems and what would be the opening salvo of the next-generation console battle. Flash forward a year later and it has been a very good year for Sony as they’ve enjoyed an uninterrupted run as the top-selling console since release. Microsoft has weathered storms of various natures ranging from PR blunders to questions about the hardware performance of their system with certain games specifically their ability to run games at eight 1080 resolution and 60 frames a second. Regardless of technical questions Microsoft is poised for a very nice fall season with the release of Sunset Overdrive and the Master Chief Collection while Sony will be debuting Little Big Planet 3 and their new television device during the holiday season ahead of some impressive looking exclusives in early 2015.
With much of the convention season behind them, Jim companies appear to be taking a brief respite and their battle for counsel domination. Aside from the occasional Destiny commercial connected to the Taco Bell promotion things have been fairly quiet in recent weeks. I expect this to wrap up very soon when the new Call of Duty commercial start to air since Microsoft has once again paid hefty amounts to ensure that their logo is prominently branded upon all advertisements.
To me this seems to be a crossroads in the marketing strategies for both companies as well both of them obviously have a campaign in mind, it almost seems like they are taking a counterculture’s mentality and waiting to see what the other is going to do before unleashing therefore guns on the consumers.
While it is always a very important time for any company, one could argue that this holiday shopping season is more important for Microsoft than Sony. I say this because this is the time for Microsoft to attempt to close the gap in terms of numbers of consoles sold against their chief rival. Since the biggest exclusives pending for Sony will debut in the first quarter of 2015, Microsoft will no doubt attempt to generate a wave of excitement for the products that they have coming and hope to build on this with an aggressive marketing campaign that will likely underscore their long-term commitment to gaming.
Sony on the other hand is likely to take an approach of being the best that’s only going to get even better with a range of new technologies including their virtual-reality product and an exciting lineup of exclusives including some as yet to be announced major titles. Expect to see some bundles as well is some price point battles between retailers where the possibility of including titles with the purchase of the system may be bandied about.
Regardless of which system you support, the weeks ahead will be very interesting times for gamers and the gaming industry as Black Friday and Cyber Monday are getting close.
