On the other hand, when marketing to people who care much less about the games and DEM FLOPZ, the Kinect and TV and Skype stuff may well be enticing. People who might not otherwise give two flips about a game box may decide that it's worth giving a shot because that stuff looks cool to them, or non-gamer parents may decide that if they're going to spend $400 on a console, they can spend the extra $100 to get one that has stuff for the rest of the family too.
These scenarios you are describing though don't really exist:
1.) People who don't give two flips about consoles or gaming aren't going to go out and spend $500 dollars on something that neither replaces or goes beyond/improves upon what a DVR and a computer with access to the internet can already do.
2.) People who don't care about games yet have hundreds of dollars to throw around would also consider a
SMART TV instead.
3.) The non-gamer parents are going to buy (or help buy) whatever console their kid wants. The kid likely doesn't care about this 'all in one family experience'
4.) To a kid/teen paying for his own new console, $100 does make a very large difference.
5.) If there is somebody that's even a halfway serious gamer in the family (7+ hours a week), they likely won't want to share their console with their family and stop gaming every time a family member wants to watch TV. Same thing with the family and their gamer son. The would likely prefer that the console is played in another room.
Growing up, my console and most of my friends' consoles were set-up in bedrooms or basements or dens, not in the living room so that we could play games uninterrupted. It may be fine for a single person living alone, but even just living with my girlfriend, the Xbox One and PS4 will never become the all-in-one centerpiece of our living room because there are many times when she wants to watch a TV show and I want to play games. So I wind up moving the console to another room or she winds up going to another room.
I imagine I'm going to see a lot of ignored posts in response to this, though, because the church of pre-launch metrics are preaching that winning the six months before launch in the hardcore audience equates to the entire future of the generation.
Give me a break, get off your high horse. Where did I say anything like that?
As stupid and petty as the arguments may get on this forum, I don't see anybody claiming that the 'winner' between the PS4 or Xbox One will be decided in the first 6 months. Personally I hope they both 'win', just like they both 'won' last generation IMO. However, there is no denying that the bad PR, higher price point, and less power
could hurt the Xbox One's sales. The hardware isn't going to change and although manufacturing costs will go down for the Xbox One, Sony's will as well. My statement is not based on some speculative 'pre-launch metrics' it's based on common sense.
