The sales in absolute numbers aren't what form the parallels; it's the underlying factors driving the scenarios at the relative points of the lifecycles of the consoles. The gaming market was notably smaller as a whole in 1999/2000 than it is in 2022. Microsoft is flush with magnitudes more cash and big income streams to offset eating costs on this type of strategy than Sega had back in 1999 or 2000.
MS is not doing these promos for the same reason the DC and the GC were doing them, more aggressively, in desperations, while losing money, and press thinking they were on the cusp of being taken off the shelves and folding.
There have been more Series S stocks out for months prior to these deals, relative to availability to all other consoles including the Switch. The stock being that much larger now is the addition of more systems adding to stock surpluses that were already accruing over the past months.
No proof of any previous stock surplus. The S was actually in many areas harder to find than the switch, S being close to normal stock levels is not "surplus" you are trying to pretend the Series X and PS5 stock situation is normal, it's not. S is actually close to being normal and still selling despite stock on the shelves like the Switch The additional production is because MS is expecting to sell a lot of S this holiday and wanted to take advantage of the gains
You don't make more consoles for a dead product you keep making up number for.
Then why are MS pushing for GamePass apps on Samsung and other smart TVs? Why push for xCloud on mobile? Their own actions seem to show they believe opposite to what you claim.
And the implications in acknowledging something like cloud gaming, if it's indeed niche, just makes some of their other decisions, such as not investing into a mass-market consumer gaming VR/AR device, all the more odd.
To make money?
you are grossly underestimating how much money these services bring in. On A smart TV there isn't even a console to deal with so 500,000 gamepass subs for 2 years through TV's LG or Samsung is $180 million in cash, and that's not including games they buy on discount through it, MTX, dlc, or anything outside of the services like buying another controller or other accessories. So that can easily be around $500 million. That's with only 500,000 adopters.
Xcloud reaches 1 million game pass subs that stick around for just 2 years is $360 milll, add in much of those subs doing extra spending and that can be over $1 billion easily. Some of those subs will of course have it for more than 2 years increasing the money exponentially. That's just one million subs.
In the event XS consoles sell let's say for example 90 million consoles and TV only had 1 million and Xcloud only had 5, t8hat's 6 million extra from outside the consoles (we aren't even including PC yet.) and that 6 million subs at MINIMUM is $2.2 billion extra, and that's NOT including anything else just the subs, and for those there's no expense for Microsoft because they don't have to push hardware. The only thing they have to do is make sure there's software there to attract the right people.
In this scenario only 6 million subs outside Xbox and PC is niche, very small, and yet $2.2 billion MINIMUM but likely $3-$4 billion after all the additional costs and accessories. That's just for subs in a 2 year period. 4 year period? Double the numbers, $4.4 billion with potential of $7-8 billion after other costs.
TV's and Xcloud don't need to take off or replace consoles, they only have to grab a bit of that potential audience to have a large flow of cash.
You are also assuming they are marketing both much more than they actually are, especially outside gamer circles.
I mean that's one way to interpret it, I suppose. It is kind of funny that it's a 4K TV, though, considering the Series S has struggled to provide native 4K in most of the games released so far, and worst upsampled resolutions from lower base resolutions in games than PS5 and Series X.
Yet on the right TV's, still looks better on 4K tv's than a 1080p one. Whether it can su6pport it properly isn't really relevant just like those who have Bluray players connected to their 4K Tv's, or the upscale players. Those aren't 4K blurays but they still look better on 4K than 1080p.
Regardless there isn't much point here. 4K TV is cheaper than normal, and now it comes with a free Series S at no additional cost that can give you a better experience than built-in Gamepass (if that TV even supports it), and it can be used for other displays.
