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Xbox Series S | X Console Discussion

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That's a good move from Xbox and a good way to respond to the PS5 pre-order disaster. Seriously tempted to pick up an S, but I think I might wait a few months so I'm not losing £700 in one go :cry:

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Agreed that that's a good move by Xbox if that's going to be the case. The biggest problem with the PS5 was PlayStation not being clear at the end of the event what was happening, then waiting on a tweet to confirm pre-orders going live the following day - and I think that's what caused the main issue, one retailer in one country popping them up at midnight and another in another country probably running with it. 

It was pure chaos, and while I was really lucky to get a pre-order in long before the ensuing chaos through checking GAME on the off chance they'd gone live an hour or so after the Showcase, I wouldn't wish that stress on anyone here. Got to commend Xbox for setting a time and date well in advance (only issue with it is scalpers, but as we saw with the PS5 going live randomly, it doesn't deter them much), and it seems like they're doing everything they can to enforce it. 

It's hard to gauge where pre-orders are going to be at for Xbox on Tuesday, for so many reasons, but I still imagine websites will be crashing and retailers will be selling out. 

So, I just wanted to share some of the tips I picked up from getting my PS5 pre-order in (and subsequently helping friends get some long after pre-orders had gone up) with those hoping to get an Xbox pre-order in on Tuesday. 

SHORT LIST OF PRE-ORDER TIPS

For ShopTo and SimplyGames in particular (they did things a little differently)

- if pre-ordering through ShopTo, register interest beforehand. This gives you a spot in the queue for the console already, and while that doesn't guarantee a launch day arrival, it's probably going to be the least stressful way to secure one. Instead of pre-ordering directly from the console page you instead just visit the pre-order page on your account, and confirm that you still want the pre-order. You'll have up to a week to confirm it. Of course, still keep an eye out for when they go live - it's not going to hurt your chances of it arriving on launch day if you confirm it ASAP!

NOTE: £0.01 charge to register interest, which is added to your ShopTo account credit - it's mainly so they already have your payment method of choice ready for you to confirm your order. 

- if SimplyGames handles this anything like they did the PS5, if you've registed interest they'll send out an email when pre-orders go live with an exclusive access page which cannot be shared - they held stock (albeit in bundles) for those who had registed. Get an account with them, register interest, and the link in the email will take you to that exclusive access page once you have logged in. 

General advice

- follow @IGNUKDeals and @jelly_deals on Twitter and be sure to turn all notifications on (if you have particular retailers in mind for your order, do the same for their Twitter accounts too). They were completely on top of the game with letting people know when and where the PS5 pre-orders were up the other day, and did a great job at getting that info out there within minutes. 

- be ready to go at 07:30. Even if threatened with an embargo, I think it's inevitable that somewhere is going to break that 08:00 pre-order time. One retailer going live is what caused the floodgates to open with the PS5, so just be ready! 

- BIGGEST TIP: don't be afraid to checkout as a guest; in fact, it's probably going to be faster. If you have particular retailers in mind, almost everyone will be signing up to have an account so that they have their payment and address details already on the account. My experience with this the other day was that signing in to checkout wouldn't load due to high traffic, but checking out as a guest loaded almost immediately. In case you need to do this, just have your details ready to auto-fill. Must major retailers are going to be understanding and happy for you to associate an order made as a guest with your actual account. 

- don't stress out! Easier said than done when racing to do something like this, but most retailers will make more stock available to pre-order in the coming hours, days, and weeks after this initial wave of pre-orders on Tuesday. Keep some water or tea close by, you don't know how long you might be waiting for a pre-order to go through. If you don't manage to get one in, just keep your ear close to the ground for when they go back up. Several retailers with the PS5 went live, sold out, and the a few hours later went live with another round. Just be ready! 

- this one is for after you have a pre-order and depends largely on how you like to do things, but making a folder specifically for holding the emails detailing your pre-orders (console, games, accessories) for next gen has helped me to easily check the details of my order (for instance, some GAME pre-orders for the PS5 came without an order, so I could just very quickly check if mine did by checking the folder)

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No way in hell are Microsoft going to "penalise" retailers for breaking embargo, they want the retailers to shift as many consoles as they can and they're not going to piss them off. An empty threat if there ever was one, if that is even true.

 

Having a set time will actually work out worse as scalpers will be all over it. Although PS5 preorders were a disorganised mess there were lots of opportunities over a few days to snag one. I suspect Xbox preorders will be less of a fiasco purely because far less people want one.

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49 minutes ago, Sheikah said:

I suspect Xbox preorders will be less or a fiasco purely because far less people want one.

Microsoft: Our preorder system is better than yours.

Sony:

tenor.gif?itemid=6945518

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9 hours ago, Sheikah said:

because far less people want one.

Will be interesting to see if that'll turn out to be true. (not trying to throw shade, by the way)

I think there's a lot of demand for the new Xbox. More than we expect.

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Will be interesting to see if that'll turn out to be true. (not trying to throw shade, by the way)

I think there's a lot of demand for the new Xbox. More than we expect.

Almost certainly will be true I think. PS4 outsold X1 around 2.2 to 1 this generation and most people tend to stick to the brand they're already with. I expect these new Xbox consoles will do better than the X1 did though, especially the Series S, because of the price. I guess we also don't know how many consoles Microsoft are making available in the first instance.

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11 hours ago, Ronnie said:

That's a good move from Xbox and a good way to respond to the PS5 pre-order disaster. Seriously tempted to pick up an S, but I think I might wait a few months so I'm not losing £700 in one go :cry:

This method is much, much nicer for scalpers.

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7 minutes ago, Sheikah said:

Almost certainly will be true I think. PS4 outsold X1 around 2.2 to 1 this generation and most people tend to stick to the brand they're already with. I expect these new Xbox consoles will do better than the X1 did though, especially the Series S, because of the price. I guess we also don't know how many consoles Microsoft are making available in the first instance.

I know you're probably fully aware of this already, but don't forget that Xbox stopped reporting those sales figures nearly five years ago now! So I reckon it's a bit closer to 2:1 or just under that :p

But fully agree, there's a reason they stopped reporting those numbers (though I do like the idea of us being updated on player engagement). Still, with the price of the Series S, the issues a lot of people have had in trying to pre-order a PS5, and the bang for your buck factor of Game Pass, I still expect a strong start from Xbox in sales this gen. 

I still think we see sites crash and places selling out, though like with the virtual box office for cinema tickets, I do wonder if the PS5 demand the other day being out of the way now sets these sites up well for the Xbox pre-orders to go live; it was practically a stress test, and one that undoubtedly draw the attention of more consumers than the Xbox pre-orders will. 

And yeah, saying this for the umpteenth time: the only downside to announcing all of their pre-order info so far ahead of time is that it allows scalpers to prepare. Ironically, the PlayStation orders being such a mess ("tomorrow" lasting like half an hour) probably caught some scalpers off guard. 

More than anything, just hope the people who want one, get one :peace: 

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They'll sell through their initial allocation of consoles at launch, I think that can be guaranteed eapecially with the Series S and its price. The All Access plan also helps make it more accessible for people so I'd expect a heavy pick up on that front. The ratio of full sales to All Access ones will be very interesting.

Its post launch and beyond Christmas into the new year that I suspect they might start to struggle to sell units. That price is attractive but I do expect we'll start seeing less and less sales going forward unless they've got the games to fill that early part of next year. They don't, I think we can all guarantee they don't have anything first party to counter say Ratchet and Clank in the launch window beyond their launch first party titles which are ports of PC games (Gears Tactics and Microsoft Flight Simulator) and going forward through next year, unless they've got stuff hidden away they haven't announced or some projects are further forward, Sony will walk away by miles with the PS5 and the lineul of games they have coming next year.

As I say, it'll be interesting to look at how the sales of the Xboxes differ and what the breakdown will be of full sales to All Access is. After that, I don't think there'll be much point comparing them to PS5 sales as they'll just rocket off and never be caught even if Microsoft start to being stronger first party titles (they might close the gap a bit but I would expect a similar sale ratio of 2+:1 PS5s to Xboxes even with the cheaper unit).

Thanks @Cube for that bit on how Klarna works. I wasn't sure how they'd go about doing a credit check at point of sale for a pre-order especially with a high volume of pre-orders coming in. Wasn't sure if they'd do the equivalent of a Vodafone "credit check" where its simply them clicking a button, going "hmm" for about 2 seconds and then going yep you're good to go. Did also note that someone on another forum said if you pre-ordered on the All Access plan and then cancelled that it would negatively impact your credit score. Any truth in that? I suppose it would work in the same way if you outright cancelled a phone contract that you ordered with a new handset before you received it and how that would impact your credit score.

It wouldn't be an issue for me if I did go ahead with it as my score is good, always make payments on bills and such and never go into my overdraft (haven't since about 2014 when I'd moved out for the first time) and I know I'd meet all the payments going forward without any issue but wanted a bit of clarity on that in the event things came up post pre-order and I had to bail on it prior to actually receiving the console or making the first payment. As I've said, I buy either the PS5 or Xbox Series X outright at launch but with everything going on and the possibility of needing to do some renovation work at home, the monthly plan would allow me a less stressful way to manage paying for it.

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I know you're probably fully aware of this already, but don't forget that Xbox stopped reporting those sales figures nearly five years ago now! So I reckon it's a bit closer to 2:1 or just under that 
But fully agree, there's a reason they stopped reporting those numbers (though I do like the idea of us being updated on player engagement). Still, with the price of the Series S, the issues a lot of people have had in trying to pre-order a PS5, and the bang for your buck factor of Game Pass, I still expect a strong start from Xbox in sales this gen. 
I still think we see sites crash and places selling out, though like with the virtual box office for cinema tickets, I do wonder if the PS5 demand the other day being out of the way now sets these sites up well for the Xbox pre-orders to go live; it was practically a stress test, and one that undoubtedly draw the attention of more consumers than the Xbox pre-orders will. 
And yeah, saying this for the umpteenth time: the only downside to announcing all of their pre-order info so far ahead of time is that it allows scalpers to prepare. Ironically, the PlayStation orders being such a mess ("tomorrow" lasting like half an hour) probably caught some scalpers off guard. 
More than anything, just hope the people who want one, get one :peace: 
My other thought on this is that Microsoft absolutely don't want to be selling what appears to be a less desired console. So I wouldn't be surprised if they've carefully chosen the amount of consoles to make available in the first instance to control the narrative.

I guess the true test is how many websites get taken down by the preordering.

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14 minutes ago, Sheikah said:

My other thought on this is that Microsoft absolutely don't want to be selling what appears to be a less desired console. So I wouldn't be surprised if they've carefully chosen the amount of consoles to make available in the first instance to control the narrative.

I guess the true test is how many websites get taken down by the preordering. emoji14.png

Yeah, that wouldn't be too surprising!

And yeah, that's what I was getting at. There's a big possibility now that retailers have had a chance to react a bit to the overwhelming PS5 demand that their sites might be more prepared for higher demand than they were a week ago. Would still expect some to go down, but I imagine they'll have dealt with a lot of the same issues with the PS5 pre-orders and have a better idea of how to handle things (at least, one would hope). 

I think the big thing Xbox is missing here would be the lack of momentum PlayStation had going into their pre-orders going live. I'm not talking about their success in the current gen, but rather PlayStation having an event which (unintentionally) led straight into pre-orders going up, and how that sense of urgency probably had more people pre-ordering out of the gate.

Yes, hardware isn't their focus and they're selling Game Pass, but the knee jerk reaction of a lot of people here when we saw the Series S price, as well as the All Access plans, was to go "yeah, that looks great! I might pick one up!" Even if the leaks didn't happen, they were still planning to announce these prices this week, the week before pre-orders went live. Those prices sold me and others, but since then many have had enough time to weigh up what Xbox is offering out of the gate, and I think that immediate reaction to those prices isn't going to necessarily equate to pre-orders, as I imagine it did do for quite a few with the PS5.  

I'm really curious to see how many people will be picking up a Series S or X to get in on next gen that couldn't secure a PS5, too. 

I think that both PlayStation and Xbox have made a few mistakes in how they've been building up to next gen at this point, but that'll all be put to the side once next gen arrives. 

Edited by Julius

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2 hours ago, Ganepark32 said:

 

Thanks @Cube for that bit on how Klarna works. I wasn't sure how they'd go about doing a credit check at point of sale for a pre-order especially with a high volume of pre-orders coming in. Wasn't sure if they'd do the equivalent of a Vodafone "credit check" where its simply them clicking a button, going "hmm" for about 2 seconds and then going yep you're good to go. Did also note that someone on another forum said if you pre-ordered on the All Access plan and then cancelled that it would negatively impact your credit score. Any truth in that? I suppose it would work in the same way if you outright cancelled a phone contract that you ordered with a new handset before you received it and how that would impact your credit score.

It's essentially an unsecured loan, even the check will stay on your record for a year.

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I'll be preordering an X for launch if I can end up getting my order in. 

Whilst there are no launch games (like, at all lol) there's a fair few in Game Pass I have had my eye on for ages. So I don't mind the initial console price as that will tide me over until some actual new games come out. 

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2 hours ago, Cube said:

It's essentially an unsecured loan, even the check will stay on your record for a year.

It'll be a hard search, so it would stay on for two! Though how highly lenders and credit reference agencies view it in their considerations will probably trail off in the last 6-12 months :smile:

Edited by Julius
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Unfortunately they’re not offering All Access here so I’m not going to bother with one, with the games lineup I don’t see much point in getting one. Quite surprising they’re not pushing it here as people LOVE credit deals and it would seem to fit the market well.

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On 19/09/2020 at 4:07 PM, Julius said:

It'll be a hard search, so it would stay on for two! Though how highly lenders and credit reference agencies view it in their considerations will probably trail off in the last 6-12 months :smile:

It's surprising/concerning how prominent Klarna is. Shopto offers it as a payment method, I really hope people aren't using it to buy £30 - £50 games with, but I've seen Shopto advertise paying for games monthly with it. I'm honestly a little surprised Microsoft went with them.

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1 minute ago, Ike said:

It's surprising/concerning how prominent Klarna is. Shopto offers it as a payment method, I really hope people aren't using it to buy £30 - £50 games with, but I've seen Shopto advertise paying for games monthly with it. I'm honestly a little surprised Microsoft went with them.

Yeah, completely agree. I imagine they chose Klarna because they've managed to plaster their name pretty much everywhere in the last 12-18 months, but I feel that it shouldn't even be an option for products like games and clothes, especially with how low the amount of credit you take out can go (like you said: £30 - £50 games!) and still find yourself eligible. 

Unfortunately, I think that surge in popularity and brand awareness for Klarna is purely down to how little 18-25 year olds generally know about handling money, and things like credit. Of course it's not the case for everyone, but I know I've had conversations with my friends about getting credit cards, loans, etc., and the only reason I'm in any sort of position where I'd consider myself to be knowledgeable enough to give some sort of impartial advice is completely because of my job.

Before I took this job, I honestly thought putting yourself in debt to someone else and taking out a credit card was a stupid idea (because, almost objectively, it seems like it would be!), and I know plenty of others who think/thought the same. But no, turns out credit makes the world go around, and you haven't got a snowball's chance in hell of taking out that car finance/mortgage/etc. 10 years down the line without it. I just stick all my subscriptions on them and clear them every month, and now I'm 21 with a solid credit score, but anecdotally at least, so many of the people I know are financially illiterate/ignorant, and wouldn't even know where to begin. 

That's Klarna's target demographic. 

Even just looking down the list of brands and stores that Klarna advertises themselves as being available for on their website, it's pretty clear that's the case. I think it's disgusting, but it's not surprising at all, unfortunately. 

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I think the minimum is something stupid like £10.

My workplace has it for high value items (mattresses and beds), not for things like pillows.

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7 minutes ago, Cube said:

I think the minimum is something stupid like £10.

My workplace has it for high value items (mattresses and beds), not for things like pillows.

That's actually insane. 

And yeah, sounds like your workplace has the balance right. If you are going to offer credit, then have it on your big ticket items (even from a business perspective this makes more sense), and for games that would be the consoles and expensive accessories like a headset or a gaming chair, or something like that. But the smaller items, the games themselves? Maybe if they order a load of them, but just totally bizarre to me otherwise. And I'd be questioning why you'd order a bunch of games just to stick it on something like this ::shrug:

At the moment I look at lending with the perspective of walking into a bank, and questioning that if I asked for this loan in my local Santander or HSBC, would they seriously consider it? Or just laugh me out of the bank? 

It's not a universal thing, because of course people's circumstances can be unique, but it's just so bizarre to me that it's been allowed. Feels especially scummy to provide this option on smaller items in the middle of this pandemic and recession, when so many are unemployed, furlough, or on reduced hours, too. 

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I'm pretty sure Klarna don't credit check for lower amounts. I used it once before with ASOS. I spent £300 on new clothes for work and out of work and when I went to pay for it I was offered to spread over three months with no interest and no credit check. So I did it. 

The Klarna app was really good in sending notifications when payments were due and you can pay it back as quickly as you like within the 3 months. 

I'd definitely use them again. 

 

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I've seen Klarna being offered on Shopto for buying games as it's given me the option in the past but I'd never do it as it seems like an unnecessary way to pay for a game. Totally understand for higher priced items but do agree its crazy to offer it for individual smaller priced items.

I was a bit in two minds about putting in a pre-order because of the Klarna thing but having checked my credit score on Experian (haven't done it in a while so was interested anyway to see where I was, 925) and learning a bit more about it has put me a bit more at ease for putting one in. As I say, I wouldn't do it for smaller things like individual games and I could pay for a Series X out of pocket straight up but with already paying for Gamepass and now knowing that there'll be some work to do to my flat in the coming weeks, spreading the cost out does minimise any risk financially to me for being short money wise into the holidays. I'll easily make the payments so there's no issue of me defaulting on payments.

Its now to see whether I'll manage to get one on Tuesday morning. I suspect that GAME's website will get hammered because of the All Access deal so best I can hope for is be logged in to my account early morning and hope for the best.

I am curious as to when we'll hear about these other games that Microsoft have in the works that they didn't show during their last showcase. I know they have a TGS showcase but I doubt we'll see any such games there from their first party studios. Weird for them to talk it up at the end of their last showcase but have yet to do anything with it.

Do also wonder if they'll choose to focus on the Series S for the Japanese market. A more affordable console in a market where they struggle against a higher priced PS5. Xbox Ones were being sold as bluray players to shift them but wonder if a cheaper model, even without the generational leap, will make some slight headway if they can get Japanese developers on board. Just a thought that crossed my mind the other day.

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Jesus wept!!! Microsoft are NOT fucking around!!!!!

This is the biggest industry power play of the century! Guys... Microsoft just bought an entire western AAA publisher in one fell swoop!

Let that sink in... Just like that, they now own Doom, Elder Scrolls, THE LOT!

Jesus fuck! I can't even come to terms with what just happened!!

Sony will definitely be sweating now! They had better start buying up their partners like Bluepoint before Microsoft do!!

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