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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."
Well if you go by the Slashdot poll you would think no one wants it.
/.'ers are lying moron sheep that follow the crowd just like everyone else.
It becomes obvious that the vast majority of
I remember a bunch of posts on earlier threads saying that new systems have never sold out before -- and this was a constant trick by the company to get fence-sitters to go for it.
I couldn't afford PS2/Gamecube or PS/N64 when they were released, but is this usual? I sure don't remember any system flat selling out on release, so does Xbox 360 set the standard now?
Google has a game console. It's in beta, and you have to be invited by someone who already has one.
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).
Here in the UK... with the official launch in about 10 hours, I'd say an emphatic yes.
I found out today that the UK's most incompetent high-street retailer, Dixons, won't be honouring my pre-order, which I made in August. After work, I trawled around central London, trying to find shops that had reserved some stock and *weren't* doing a midnight opening, from which I might be able to grab one first thing in the morning. Pretty much nowhere had any full systems. However, most places assured me they had more than enough Core systems, if I wanted one (which I don't). I'd say there was a hint of desperation in some cases.
I love my X-Box and I can't wait to get my 360, but this launch has been the biggest self-inflicted cock-up ever. Had MS concentrated entirely on the full system, they could have sold of these just as quickly and wouldn't have had surplus stock of the Core looking like it could be sat on the shelves until Christmas.
And, in case I didn't already mention, Dixons, all their staff and all their stakeholders, utterly, utterly suck.
Microsoft is gearing up for its European launch this weekend, but many believe the shortages could be even worse over there
What do you mean by "could be"?
Stores in the UK have been taking £20 deposits on consoles, with the £20 purchasing a "guarantee" that you'll get one tomorrow, 2nd December. Many of the stores have undercompensated for the shortages. I have been guaranteed one - but many people are complaining of calling the store they preordered from, only to be told that the store hasn't had ANY consoles in, no games for the system, no accessories and no promise of delivery.
Our local ASDA (owned by Wal-Mart now, fancy that) have a queue system in place. You preorder for £20 anytime since July. You turn up today at midday (12 hours before it goes on sale) and they may give you a ticket, depending on how many consoles they have in stock. If you paid and didn't get a ticket because you were too late, you can get a refund or wait as a reserve. People check the queue every hour, and if a ticketholder isn't in line for two of these hourly checks, their ticket is passed to a reserve.
In other words, the store is FORCING you to queue for 12 hours to get hold of a console that they guaranteed you'd receive on launch day when you preordered months ago.
Our local branch of GAME took 280 preorders. They have 32 premium systems and 10 core packs. They have ONE VGA cable. ONE Play N Charge kit. TWO extra wireless controllers. No wired controllers. No headsets. No Xbox Live subscription or points cards and they only have enough copies of PGR3 to satisfy the successful preorders.
And they're the biggest store that sells games for miles. I've called 14 stores within a 20 mile radius to reserve Kameo and Tiger Woods. Nobody has any left over after preorders. Luckily my PGR3 is safe, but if you just preordered the console and managed to get one - you might not have anything to play on it...now tell me, how hard is it to use an existing process and supply chain to duplicate standard DVD discs and get them to stores. I can buy King Kong for Xbox from any store I choose...most have a ton of copies of it...but I can't buy King Kong for Xbox 360 anywhere. Work that one out.
My Mind Is Rewired. Is Yours?
I don't get it. No one I know wants one of these things and yet they're running out of them? Something's not right here.
Yes - you're aparrently old enough to communicate with the outside world, but seemingly don't realize that you aren't the center of it.
Since I can't tell them apart, I treat all ACs as the same person.
Ok, I could see how MS would love the idea of 360's being "sold out" in every store, obviously... but don't you think they would rather sell more, cement a higher user base and take advantage of being the first next-gen console available, rather than simply knowing that 360's are in high demand? People on eBay are profiting more from this situation than MS.
With the news of faulty power supplies and other hardware issues, I really believe that they were rushing to get them out there, and they would have more available if they could. The whole "shortage on purpose" scenario just doesn't make sense to me, especially if it continues through Xmas season, which would be like a candy store limiting its supply right before Halloween, but then promising everyone that there would be more available in January. At least they would be sure to sell out all their candy, yippee!
Call me an MS fanboy if you must (I don't plan on buying a 360), I'm just trying to figure out why so many people really believe that this shortage was on purpose. Maybe I'm just naive and blind to the fact that MS would rather stab puppies and shoot chlidren than have happy consumers. Because they're evil.
Or, more likely, it's just business. While the rude and evil theory resonates with a certain age group quite well it just doesn't stand up logically.
Microsoft, like most electronic manufacturers, doesn't own the factory that makes their hardware. They sub out the manufacturing to Pacific rim contract manufacturers like Flextronics. Flextronics only has a certain amount of manufacturing capabilities. On average those facilities are running at near full capacity. It's not in Flextronics' best interest to have extra production capacity that is just sitting around unused. Microsoft has to work out a deal with Flextronics to get a finite amount of production capabilities, more than likely givng up their 1st gen XBox manufacturing run in the process, just to get more space. They get X amount of facility and tell Flextronics that they want to launch te console on a certain date. Flextronics says, "Ok, that means you will have # consoles at launch and # consoles each week after that."
At this point Microsoft has a few options:
1) Live with that production capability 2) Sub out to more manufacturers 3) Pay Flextronics to build more space
Option 1 saves the most up front money but means a hard limit on the # of consoles at launch. Option 2 can increase the # of consoles at launch, but the availability of those consoles is dependent on the # of manufacturers available, the amount of capacity they are offering, and the price point for that capacity. Option 3 can increase the # of consoles at launch, but is time dependent (can we get the facility going in time?) and will probably end up being a monetary loss for Microsoft. They are essentially building out Flextronics's business for them.
All of these options have to be weighed against the expected necessary weekly production of consoles over the entire lifespan of the console. #3 is a very bad option in this light. While Microsoft could easily make a lot more consoles for launch by paying Flextronics to build more capacity there's no reason to expect that they will need to utilize that amount of capacity over the life of the console. Microsoft would pay for a short term production increase, cut back on production when supply became greater than demand, and leave Flextronics to sell that production capacity out to other companies, like Sony or Nintendo. It's definitely not in Microsoft's best interest to create production capacity for their competitors.
So, Microsoft strikes a balance between cost, # of units available at launch, and required capacity over the life of the console. That will almost always mean demand is higher than supply when there is peak interest in the console, but over the life of the console the supply:demand ratio will be as close to 1:1 as possible.
This whole equation is compounded for Microsoft because of the fact that they are trying to get XBoxes launched in all markets before the demand for them has leveled off in the first market. There just isn't enough manufacturing capacity available to ensure that all of the markets have a glut of product at launch.
Do you really think it's in Microsoft's best interest to annoy potential customers with an artificially introduced shortage? What good does it get them? The lack of available consoles isn't increasing the number of people that want a 360. It's not like Mr. Bob Suburbanite who's never played a game is suddenly saying, "All of the forum trolls are royally pissed that Bill Gates is sitting on a stack of unreleased consoles and laughing maniacally. Well golly, that makes me want one of these things!!!" Quite the opposite, actually. More than likely people who haven't been hanging pictures of 360s in their Jr. High School locker for the past two ye
I think they're trying to walk the line between "sell as much as we can" and "get as much mindshare as possible". Selling out might get you some mindshare, but it won't increase your userbase. Increasing your userbase as much as possible won't build as much hype. And we have yet to see if the hype will help in the long run (especially, say, a year from now).
That and the fact that the price of games and the systems (aside from what Nintendo is saying about the Revolution) themselves are higher than they were the last time, and they're gonna see less of their target audience (teens and college students) with their "disposable income" not being able to allow them to buy the amount of stuff they're expecting them to buy. I see game prices going up, but I don't see a raise in the future for my college workstudy job.
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