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Xbox Marketing VP Says 10M 360s In First Year
Peter Moore, the VP for Xbox marketing, has publicly stated that the Xbox 360 will sell 10 million units by the end of the first year. From the article: "The advantage of launching first for Microsoft, though, is that it has the chance to establish itself as a prominent next-generation format without initial competition. 'The target of 10 million units gives tremendous momentum to a platform,' said Moore at the ELSPA event. The target is certainly an ambitious one, as the current lifetime to date total for Xbox consoles sales worldwide is only around 21 million after almost four years on sale."
This doesn't seem an especially unrealistic estimate. If anything, I'd say it's slightly lower than where MS should be aiming, given their stated intention to rival the PS3. After all, they've got an entire Christmas season to themselves, they've got a pretty well oiled marketing machine and they're going to be hitting the Japanese market *much* harder than they did last time around. I know that's not saying much, but with the developers they have on board this time, it could all end very differently.
If I had to hazard a guess as to why they've picked the 10 million figure, I'd say that they've decided: a) that it sounds a nice big number to people who don't know the console market b) that they're probably not going to have to give embarrassing explanations when they fall short of it and c) that there's a good chance they'll exceed it, in which case they can have a good gloat.
"The target of 10 million units gives tremendous momentum to a platform"
No, jackass, the sale of 10 million units gives tremendous momentum to a platform. The target just gives you an excuse to run your mouth off and get it printed by gullible editors.
I think there is a world market for maybe five personal web logs.
With the annoucement that Square-Enix will be supporting the 360, they can probably triple their sales per year...
"A truly wise man realizes he knows nothing."
What on Earth does that have to do with the X360? Other than it coming out ahead of the competition, Sega's failures there bear no similarity to the situation Microsoft faces. Sega had already had the MegaCD, the 32 addon for the Megadrive/Genesis, and the Saturn be rejected by consumers. They had unfortunately been out of it for a while by the time the Dreamcast launched.
Microsoft has had a great deal of success with the Xbox, by some measures overtaking one of the biggest names in the industry (Nintendo) and by many more leading the pack with their online gaming service - something that many would consider to be the next Big Thing for consoles after it changed the PC gaming industry so drastically over the last decade.
All of this is of course ignoring the fact that MS just won't let this fail. The Xbox is a massive end-run to get a Microsoft device in the living room, to get their brand recognition up for people that don't go near computers, and to use as a platform for the rest of their intentions such as in IPTV. It's a Microsoft reach around so you won't notice the pounding they're going to give you, and I doubt they'll be willing to pull out early.
So to speak.
This comment was formatted for readability, but I forgot the line break tags
Sales of 10 million units in 12-18 months are not too unrealistic to expect; that is unless your platform is called the N-Gage. The question that is really important is how many 360s do they have to sell in 12-18 months? This question is more centered around what the minimum number of XBox 360 systems that have to be sold to consider the platform viable.
I know that more people will question the potential sales of the Revolution, but in all honesty, the XBox 360 will need to be far more successful in order to generate a follow-up system. The reason for this is that Nintendo's only buisness is making videogames (and their systems) and Nintendo is a profitable at this buisness; on the other hand Microsoft has tons of other buisnesses and is loosing a lot of money trying to establish a presence in this industry. If Microsoft continues loosing money in this generation, I suspect that they will need to steal a ton of market share in order to justify the continued losses to their shareholders.
Well, if they can get the price point right, I think it's plausible.
..." according to the industry watchers.
I think if they release it for around $200-225, then it will definately be do-able.
Before you start telling me how they won't release that low, remember the hype around PSP: at first there was "no way that it would be less than $400
If you combine this with the $60+ (and rising!) price point for newer games, I think the whole thing is plausible.
I know I'll get one. Then again, I plan on getting a PS3 as well (but only after the first gen hardware is gone).
Why do I M2 everything negatively?
10 Million might just be doable if they can make them fast enough. I know I would have had a PS2 sooner if it were possible.
That is very true. With the exception of NES in the 8-bit era, no other first launch console of a generation has outlasted a later counterpart.
- Turbo Graphics-16 killed by Sega Genesis
- Sega Saturn killed by PS1
- Dreamcast killed by PS2
Of course, M$ has something no other first launch company ever had. That's a billion dollar windows operating system.