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360 Sells 400k Units, New Stock This Weekend
Next Generation is reporting an estimate of 400,000 units sold for the Xbox 360 in its first week on the retail shelves. Microsoft is planning on having more stock available as of this weekend. From the article: "It seems even the biggest retailers are in the dark. Speaking to USA Today, Circuit City's Jim Babb said, 'We knew demand would outstrip supply for some time. I have been told we'll get additional supplies, so I can only advise customers keep checking back with stores and on the website.' Microsoft is gearing up for its European launch this weekend, but many believe the shortages could be even worse over there. Retail supplies are said to be tiny, and many customers who have pre-ordered have been told that they may not receive their machines this side of the New Year."
http://psp.ign.com/articles/604/604548p1.html
The PSP's launch was considered a failure after selling 150% as many units as the XBox 360
McNealy believes Microsoft could have sold up to three times that amount, putting the company halfway to its three month target of 3 million units worldwide. "I think they would have been happy to have sold another million if they could have. They just didn't have them," he said.
It is easy to make a claim like this without having anything to base it on. I don't work in retail but I have heard that only about 5%-10% of preorders were 'lost' by the 360 shortage; one person I know was saying that their Microsoft rep gave him the impression that they were trying to be just shy of the preorder numbers to ensure a sell out (possibly a paranoid delusion, I don't know). This would imply that for every person who pre-ordered 2 would have walked in in the first week expecting to purchace a system (a highly unlikely situation).
This Gamespy article states that the PS2 actually sold 980k units by the end of the second day after launch. This is the Japanese market we're talking so it doesn't really say much after all but at least the Xbox 360 is very unlikely to reach similar figures in Japan and isn't doing it in the US which is a larger market (the PS2 has sold nearly twice the number of consoles in the US compared to Japan). The PlayStation 2 did instantly sell the 500k stock they had available during launch in the US as well though.
Another interesting little detail you can find in the Wikipedia article is that the previous opening day record was 225k for the Sega Dreamcast and we all know how well that worked out in the long run. DC's sales slowed rapidly after a good start. In any case, I think it's a little early to say anything about the 360's success after only one week.