Being able to play games in native 4K on the newly launched and yet-to-be-made-available XBox One X (formerly Project Scorpio) from Microsoft isn’t worth $499. Or is it? At that price, it’s $100 more expensive than the Sony PlayStation 4 Pro, but is true 4K actually worth that much?
Perhaps, but it seems like Microsoft is taking a different angle with the Xbox One X. It’s started to position itself as a premium device maker, just like Apple. And it’s charging extra for that, not necessarily for the 4K. Of course, I’ll admit that some of the components in the Xbox One X, such as the 8-core Custom AMD CPU, 12GB GDDR5 of graphic memory, 6 Teraflop GPU, 326 GB/sec memory bandwidth and advanced liquid cooling are more expensive to deploy on a gaming console, so those might justify the higher price.
But the problem is, no one is looking for specs. Even serious gamers merely looks at specs, but what they’re looking for is a better gaming experience. Not many gamers will even have a 4K TV, as a matter of fact, and most others won’t even notice unless they do a side-by-side comparison.
And that brings us back to Apple. Why are iPhones so popular despite being at the top end of the smartphone market, price-wise? It’s because of the “experience” more than anything else. That, and the brand exclusivity. And that’s what we believe Microsoft is going for. It began with Surface, and it’s bleeding into Xbox. The way things are shaping up, every device from Microsoft here on out will likely be “over-priced” when compared to the competition, exactly the way the $1,000 iPhone 8 will be “over-priced” when it comes out.
That won’t stop people from buying these products, and it’s something Microsoft has recently learned. Of course, you can’t ignore the fact that Surface revenues actually dipped for Microsoft during the most recently reported quarterly earnings. But that’s more to do with a lack of new or refreshed products than anything else.
Surface devices themselves have received very high consumer ratings, with Surface Pro 4 even besting the iPad Pro in terms of user satisfaction, as we saw from the recent JD Power survey. Of course, we also showed why a Surface Pro vs iPad Pro comparison was unfair, but that’s besides the point here.
What’s relevant to this discussion is that Microsoft has finally figured out the fact that exclusive and expensive is the way to go. And that will be validated by Xbox One X sales during the 2017 holiday season. Apple’s secret recipe for success is now Microsoft’s potential for success.
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