Late in 2020 (~ November) Microsoft unveiled the Xbox Series X, the latest iteration of the massively popular online multiplayer gaming and digital media delivery service.
Though you can still find it elsewhere on the internet, and Amazon has listings like this one (below) for those interested:
Microsoft Xbox One X 1TB Console with Wireless Controller: Xbox One X Enhanced, HDR, Native 4K, Ultra HD (Renewed) (2017 Model)
The complete Xbox Series X package comes with a Xbox Series X console, controller, Ultra High Speed HDMI cable and power cord. You can also purchase (for an additional fee) the Xbox Game Pass and the Seagate Storage Expansion Card for Xbox Series X | S to round out your experience.
The Xbox Series X is an amazing development for gamers and opens up new, exciting worlds associated with incredibly popular games like Halo Infinite, Assassin’s Creed Valhalla, The Ascent, Destiny 2 Beyond Light, 2K21 and Watch Dogs Legion. It’s a very robust and versatile system and backwards compatible with thousand of other games as well.
It sports faster load times, higher resolution, more stable frame rates, and improved input latency across thousands of Xbox One, Xbox 360, and Original Xbox games.
You can check out all of the technical detail’s on Microsoft’s site, but for those who want to know – it also features a split motherboard, a state-of-the-art heat sink, vapor chamber and super quiet fan that add up to a simply superior form of gameplay.
We’re not sure if we should be calling it revolutionary, but it is really “that good.”
The price? It’s a bit steep, at $499.99. Microsoft offers a “subscription” version as well, coming in at $34.99 per month.
Even so, it’s a bit pricy and out of range of a lot of people – especially as the pandemic continues to weigh down on the economy and many people are having a tough time financially.
In fact, as of February 2021, just 16% of adult Americans answered “yes” when we asked them if they were likely to buy an Xbox Series X within the next 3 months (note that the anticipated purchase could be for them or for someone else, e.g., a gift).
Among those who said they were planning on buying an XBox Series X within the next three months…
Male respondents were somewhat more likely to plan on purchasing an XBox Series X (male: 56% vs. female: 44%).
Looking at age, we found that those between the ages of 25 and 34 were most likely to plan on buying an XBox Series X (35%), followed by those between the ages of 34 to 44 (21%) and 55 to 64 (21%).
Nearly one in five (19%) of those between the ages of 45 to 54 said they’d likely buy an XBox Series X in three months.
There were also some interesting differences observed when we sliced the data by household income – hose earning between $50K and $75K were most likely to plan on purchasing an XBox (40%), while having at least a 4-year college degree (or more) was a significant factor in purchase plans.
We also parsed the data according to how people view themselves according to self-descriptors such as:
- I am open minded
- I am a risk taker
- I am an early adopter of new technology
- I am the first to try something new
- I am open to new experiences
We found something interesting…
When you order the above self-descriptors from most abstract and general to something that can be associated with concrete, specific actions, we found the following pattern:
That is, those most likely to say that they plan on purchasing an Xbox Series X were also those most likely to exist along the concrete/specific action end of the above “openness” spectrum.
That is, sure, a lot of people see themselves as open minded, but when faced with an actual, concrete choice to act on something in particular – in this case, purchase an Xbox Series X – their likelihood to buy wasn’t very high.
And the pattern develops from there – the more you move along the spectrum, becoming more and more specific in terms of openness (that is, when that openness moves away from a generality and moves into the territory of a concrete, quantifiable action), you see the likelihood to buy an Xbox increase steadily.
It’s a bit complicated, but if we were advising Microsoft on how to boost sales of their Xbox Series X, we’d suggest they target self-described risk takers and those who are willing to try something new. That might seem obvious once stated like this – but it’s not necessarily obvious at the start. In fact, when we asked a few people in the industry who they would target to boost Xbox sales, they listed the obvious targets – gamers, people of a certain age, techies…but our research (we’d like to think) opens up a whole new way of looking at the market for Xbox buyers.
And when it’s all said and done, it totally makes sense. The Xbox Series X is a fabulous addition to the market for such products, but it’s pricy, and perhaps even more pricey when you consider we’re in the middle of a pandemic, lockdowns and people negatively impacted by pockets of economic downturn.
So who would be most willing – at least among those who can afford it – to spend money on a something new…yes, gamers, yes, dedicated Xbox fans, yes, yes and yes to the usual market segments, but also yes to those who see themselves as risk takers and willing to try something new.
Sure, there’s a lot of overlap among these segments, and we hope our analysis adds an interesting new dimension to its understanding.