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Microsoft Earnings Include Xbox Predictions

Posted by simoniker on from the building-lotsa-consoles dept.

Thanks to an anonymous reader for pointing to Microsoft's press release discussing sales figures and plans for Xbox hardware and software, as part of their 4th quarter earnings. According to the release, "Since the launch of Xbox in 2001, Microsoft has sold over 9.4 million Xbox consoles worldwide, and by the end of the next fiscal year, Microsoft expects to have sold 14.5 to 16.0 million consoles." Xbox Live has "..over 500,000 subscribers worldwide participating in more than 1 million game sessions every week", and Halo 2 will be out by June 2004 (the end of next fiscal year), but other than saying that the Xbox-related Home and Entertainment section "..posted stronger than expected results in the fourth quarter, with 8% revenue growth over the prior year", there was no specific statement about Xbox's overall financial gain or loss.

13 of 47 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Not bad... by Anonvmous+Coward · · Score: 4, Funny

    "15 million in 3 years. Not too shabby. I mean look at TiVo. They are going on 6 years and they have a measly 700,000 subs."

    Well, to be fair, TiVo's port of Halo suffered from horrible control.

  2. in japan? by SophtwareSlump · · Score: 3, Interesting
    Any guesses on how many of these 15 million consoles were sold in Japan? I'm guessing it's not even a million. I saw a monthly or quarterly sales report that showed the PS1 was outselling the XBox by a 2:1 ratio. That would hurt even my pride ;)

    Why hasn't MSFT tried to take over Square/Enix? That could move some consoles. It's not like the DOJ is going to do anything about it.

    1. Re:in japan? by imitier · · Score: 2, Informative

      I think they've sold a total of something less than 350,000 units since launch in Japan. Apparently their current solution to this problem is release a slew of non-localized Western games.

    2. Re:in japan? by unclethursday · · Score: 2, Interesting
      It's actually almost 390k since the Japanese launch. About 387k or so right now.

      The recent Dino Crisis 3 bundle has helped sales a bit, with the Xbox selling over 4k in the first week of the bundle, and it's remained at slightly over 1k per week since then (a feat for the console over there).

  3. Gratuitous PS2 comparison by JPelzer · · Score: 5, Informative

    Of course, for the period of 4/1/2002 to 3/31/2003, Sony shipped 22,520,000 PS2's. That's in addition to the previous year's 18,070,000 units. They've shipped well over 51,000,000 PS2's since launch.

    And over that same 4/1/2002 to 3/31/2003 (1 year) timespan, they shipped 7,400,000 PSOne's.

    Yay for XBox, long live the Playstation! ;-)

    1. Re:Gratuitous PS2 comparison by n_jed · · Score: 2, Funny

      You do know that when a playstation breaks down and is replaced (which happens often) it is also counted as a sale.

    2. Re:Gratuitous PS2 comparison by Blob+Pet · · Score: 2, Funny

      just as when your X box gets a green screen of death.

      --
      "...today consumers have been conditioned to think of beer when they see a bullfrog..."
  4. no statement about profit or loss? by toddhunter · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Well you can guess what that means then. You can be sure the second the xbox actually makes a profit (?) it will be all over every news source in the world.

  5. Obligatory rant about XBox sales by Daetrin · · Score: 3, Insightful
    15 million in 3 years. Not too shabby. I mean look at TiVo. They are going on 6 years and they have a measly 700,000 subs.

    People, including developers deciding what console to make games for, look at numbers like these and are impressed (or at least Microsoft is hoping that they'll be impressed.) However Microsoft isn't saying and most people aren't asking how many of those projected 15 million units will be made into Linux boxes for which the owner isn't buying any games.

    Even if we unreasonably assume that that number is one million, then by the worst-case analysis i've seen (or best-case, for the anti-Microsoft people) of $200 lost per console, Microsoft has lost $200 million from those sales and gained a million units sold to add to their figures. They spent over $500 million in advertising just for the launch, you think they'd complain about $200 million to increase their total units sold by 7%?

    In order to have cut Microsoft's profits in half, just for this one year, 20,000,000 people would have to buy an XBox and not get any games for it, which would instantly catapult Microsoft into first place in the console race, at which point everyone and their brother would want to be making XBox games. Suddenly the XBox would have a ton of good games for it, and then a ton of people would buy the XBox in order to purchase and play those good games. (And how many of those tbeoretical original 20 million Linux users would resist the temptation to pick up a few of the really good games?)

    That is why the idea of "buy an XBox but put Linux on it and screw Microsoft economically" is a joke. If you want to do it just to thumb your nose at Microsoft, go ahead, but if you think you're hurting them financially, you're just kidding yourself. You're only helping them less than the average purchaser.

    Either so few people are buying XBoxes and no games that the financal cost to Microsoft is insignificant, or so many are doing so that it is a PR boon at an insignificant cost (for a company like Microsoft at least.)

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    This Space Intentionally Left Blank
    1. Re:Obligatory rant about XBox sales by nelsonal · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Surprisingly few, they have one of the highest attach rates in the business, I think they mentioned that they are selling something like 5 games with each unit. (It's possible that they were counting the two free games in that, but even so that is right up there with Sony, and ahead of Nintendo. Loss is probably less than $100 per box now, given how quickly component prices fall.

      --
      Degaussing scares the bad magnetism out of the monitor and fills it with good karma.
    2. Re:Obligatory rant about XBox sales by ceejayoz · · Score: 2, Interesting

      However Microsoft isn't saying and most people aren't asking how many of those projected 15 million units will be made into Linux boxes for which the owner isn't buying any games.

      I suspect the number is somewhere near twelve.

      Okay, that's a slight exaggeration, but the Xbox Linux statistics page shows 313,000 downloads, and most of those are probably "hmm, I'm curious, lets see what the code looks like..."

  6. Re:Japan sales by Daetrin · · Score: 2, Insightful
    There must be some huge cultural factor that Microsoft neglected to consider.

    Apparently that factor is making games that the Japanese want to play. As posted in a recent Slashdot article, Microsoft's response to that problem is to import even more American games. Good luck :)

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  7. Statistics.... by chendo · · Score: 2, Insightful

    75.3% of statistics are made up on the spot ;)

    And on a more serious note, I bet M$ is exaggeratting on the statistics again. I can't find the link for it on slashdot.

    --
    Founder of Mirror Moon - Tsukihime Game Trans