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Microsoft Aims For 15 Million 360s By Next Year
Gamespot is carrying the news that Microsoft is aiming to sell 13 to 15 Million consoles by June of next year. The story shows good and bad news for the company; While they've already sold 5 Million units, the Home Entertainment division lost about $1.2 billion for the last year. From the article: "Will Microsoft make its goal in the face of not one, but two rival next-gen console launches this fall? That remains to be determined, but the console will have the advantage of being cheaper than the Sony PlayStation 3 and having a bigger game library than the Nintendo Wii. The upcoming 12 months will also see several exclusive 'system seller' titles be released for the 360, including Epic Games' Gears of War, which is tentatively due this holiday season." Kotaku points out that, to sweeten the pot, a new bundle pack may be in the offing for the system.
I thought that the XBox division lose a billion dollars every year, and always have? I'm sure I remember reading that last year. They've just had to write off a load of R&D money for the 360, we know they aren't making any profit on the physical hardware, and the sales figures for the original XBox have totally nosedived, so it's hardly surprising.
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I think they can hit that mark easily. 15 million units produced should be no problem in that timeframe.
Oh, sold? Well, that could be more of a problem.
Let's be realistic here. The Wii will have Gamecube backwards compatibility, as well as the reported classic system emulations giving it a large library right from the get go. I'm sure the PS3 will also have a decent level of backwards compatibility as well. Backwards compatibility for the Xbox360 has been extremely hit-and-miss -- Dubious at best, certainly over-hyped, which forces Microsoft to rely on building new expensive titles for their new system. I predict their 15 million units prediction is also over-hyped.
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Taking 300W, putting out enough heat to warm a house during a Siberian winter and catching on fire is not the first way to win over customers.
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Home Entertainment division lost about $1.2 billion for the last year.
They're on track to lose $4+ billion for this generation console. That's their goal right?! Just like the last one?!
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So exactly how they plan on selling them, with no worthy software?
Or in other words, why should I - already having a top-end gaming PC - buy one? Which games does it offer that I can't play otherwise, and that are worth the ridiculously high prices (70e+ in some parts of europe)
Gears of War has some potential, but so far its a shiny graphics demo. Nothing launched exclusively so far has had any real meat to it. X360 is missing it's 'Halo' to sell it, unlike the original Xbox at launch, and most announced shiny thingys at E3 are multiplatform, with versions also for PC and/or PS3. As long as PS3 has some major exclusives (Metal Gear series and Gran Turismo series alone will sell fuckton of overpriced PS3s), and Xbox 360 has only shinyed-up ports and crap, it won't sell.
Consoles live and die by their _exclusive_ triple-A titles. Microsoft seems to have forgotten this one...
I fear you have little experience in retail. Most large retailers (*cough*Wal-Mart*cough*) require the ability to return unsold stock to you and get their money back. Technically, even though the retailer may have bought the units, and have them sitting on shelves in stores, you cannot book it as sales revenue without also booking the RMA liability dollars (though some accountants are well paid for finding ways of doing so anyhow). Anyway, shipped is a long way from sold.
Also, most large retailers have corporate buyers with certain authority what to buy, etc. as well as local buyers with some authority to buy and stock items particular to that given store. It is not at all unheard of, however unfortunate it might seem, that a corporate buyer is buying on a contract, purchase X number of units of some widget, sends a percentage of them to each store, even though some stores have pallets of them sitting in the back wasting space. That's when those "pre-authorized" RMAs start coming in handy.
It is also common to have store FOO returning product while store BAR is buying more even though it is often less expensive to simply stock transfer products from FOO to BAR. A lot of it depends on the corporate structure and culture, the accounting setup, operating procedures, etc., and all that other corporate crap. I've seen managers of various levels refuse to ship stock from their store to another, even though they don't need it, the other store does, and there is nothing technically forbidding them from doing so...due to departmental and budgetary boundary lines (ie., some corporate structures, while looking good on paper, tend to create fiefdoms, enhance corporate politics, and all that jazz). Just remember: retailers aren't all perfectly oiled machines or even that adeptly managed. Just like anything else where people are involved. Nobody's perfect and it shows up more when there's less nobody around, if you catch my drift.