Xbox’s Major Nelson says that announcing a console without showing it ‘worked for’ PS4

As humans, sometimes we say and do things that are in direct contradiction with one another. The important thing to do is to learn from your experiences — and I think Microsoft is doing exactly that.

In February 2013, Sony announced the PlayStation 4 without actually showing the system. That didn’t go without a comment from Larry “Major Nelson” Hryb, one of the faces of Xbox at Microsoft. Three years later, Microsoft used a similar strategy for revealing its Project Scorpio update to the Xbox One — and a few people pointed that out on Twitter. Once again, Hryb wasn’t afraid to make a comment.

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“It worked for them,” he wrote on Twitter, referring to Sony and PlayStation 4.

Hryb has a point. Sony didn’t show the PlayStation 4 in 2013, but that did not end up hurting its sales. PS4 has outsold Xbox One for all but four months since November 2013. Microsoft’s Xbox One isn’t failing — the Xbox One is selling faster than the Xbox 360 — but it is clearly uncomfortable with its position as a distant second in the console market.

The company’s new strategy to take on Sony includes the Scorpio, which is a super-powerful version of the Xbox One built for 4K games and virtual reality. It is coming holiday of next year, which explains why Microsoft didn’t have a physical console to show off.