MS: 1.5 million 360s sold as of Dec 31st 2005

[mckmas8808]

First of all MS didn't say shiped they said sold, we know there is a huge shortage in the US, many customers still waiting for their pre-order, NPD tracks sales and i find very very very unlikely that they got off 300.000 units in their numbers, if those remaing consoles was in fact shiped but not sold , then why there is still such a huge shortage?
The only logical explanation i can think of (if the lying isn't true) is that the remaining consoles are replacement consoles for broken ones, they never got into the retailer channel so NPD don't have any track of them, but i find that number quite high for replacements, i still think that the "lying" explanation is more reasonable.

Slay come on man. 300,000 units off? I thought MS said they sold 900,000 to North America. Throw in a few Canadian and Mexican units and add in the few units that NPD US and Canada didn't count a BAM you will probably have your 900,000 unit number.

 

[Sethamin]

First of all MS didn't say shiped they said sold, we know there is a huge shortage in the US, many customers still waiting for their pre-order, NPD tracks sales and i find very very very unlikely that they got off 300.000 units in their numbers, if those remaing consoles was in fact shiped but not sold , then why there is still such a huge shortage?
The only logical explanation i can think of (if the lying isn't true) is that the remaining consoles are replacement consoles for broken ones, they never got into the retailer channel so NPD don't have any track of them, but i find that number quite high for replacements, i still think that the "lying" explanation is more reasonable.

Seriously? Do you have some info that we don't? I mean, analysts are wrong all the time. When a company announces their earnings of X cents/share instead of Y cents/share, no one goes "Wait, every analyst said it would be Y cents...they must be lying!". Do you have some actual reason to believe they're lying, besides your own personal opinion?

 

[Slay]

Slay come on man. 300,000 units off? I thought MS said they sold 900,000 to North America. Throw in a few Canadian and Mexican units and add in the few units that NPD US and Canada didn't count a BAM you will probably have your 900,000 unit number.

Following the release of NPD Group data for console sales in the U.S. during November, similar data has now been made available for Canada – with combined Xbox 360 hardware and software sales accounting for more than $21 million of revenue.

All launch stock of the console was sold out, accounting for 32,100 units, compared to approximately 326,000 in the U.S.

http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=7527
So they just sold 32.100 unit at launch in Canada, i'll say another 30.000 at December (judging from the US numbers in those two months) so you still have 240.000 consoles left , and you can't seriously claim that those consoles got into Mexico

@Sethamin
I'm not talking about analyst predictions, i'm talking about the NPD sales numbers, there is a huge difference.

 

[scooby_dooby]

MS knows how many consoles they shipped, better than NPD.

I'd imagine they have to cite NPD for software sales as they don't ship all the software themselves. Hardware is a different story, they should know exactly how many have been shipped/sold, and the bottom line is they simply can not lie about this sort of thing, so we have to assume it's legit.

 

[Inane_Dork]

So MS is lying on its quarterly report. Yeah, I bet that's right. They have so much more to gain by increasing X360 sales a few hundred thousand and risking massive, company-wide inspection. I'm sure MS has no qualm about being compared to Enron et al.

 

[mckmas8808]

Good point Slay. But still at the end of the day it doesn't matter. There aren't any in stores anyway. *So if it's shipped then they are basically all sold out now. We might as well mark MS down for 1.5 million



*Except in Japan. Oh poor Japan.

 

[patsu]

I took a quick look at the last few postings. The numbers usually do not match because of a few factors:

Why Sales out (sales to consumers) != Sales in (sales to distis and retailers) ?
* Sales out is usually estimated based on a large enough and representative sample size
* Counting method is slightly different.
e.g., Even for sales-in alone: Do you count/book a sales when it's ordered (i.e., not fulfilled yet !), when it's shipped out (could be in-transit), when it's received and acknowledged by the buyers. You have to look at their accounting methods to know.
* How do you report ?
Whether auditors allow you to report all the sales in number is questionable. This is because of 100,000 units sold... say 1000 may be returned on the manufacturer's cost (for various reasons). So they should only recognize 99,000 unit sales (based on historic trend).

There are enough room/ambiguity for any company, including MS, to massage and still be consistent with their accounting practices. They don't have to outright lie.

 

[expletive]

@Sethamin I'm not talking about analyst predictions, i'm talking about the NPD sales numbers, there is a huge difference.

Yes but NPD is not a unit by unit count of consoles. Its an extrapolation based on a sampling isnt it?

 

[Slay]

Yes but NPD is not a unit by unit count of consoles. Its an extrapolation based on a sampling isnt it?

Unit by unit for some retailers, extrapolation for others, and yes there is an error margin 2-3% in their extrapolations, not 30%.
If MS was talking for total sales till today, then the numbers would fit, they would be consistant with NPD numbers for November and December.
If MS was talking about shiped numbers, and there was plenty of 360 in stores (like Japan) then the numbers could also fit.

 

[Laa-Yosh]

Okay, I'm sure that you know it better. Could you please move along now?

 

[Platon]

Unit by unit for some retailers, extrapolation for others, and yes there is an error margin 2-3% in their extrapolations, not 30%.
If MS was talking for total sales till today, then the numbers would fit, they would be consistant with NPD numbers for November and December.
If MS was talking about shiped numbers, and there was plenty of 360 in stores (like Japan) then the numbers could also fit.

Why would MS want to lie?...

 

[Mr. Hanky]

To sway market perceptions where advantageous?

 

[nelg]

highly unlikely to lie or even misstate in a public press release, you can pretty much bank on those number being correct, they are heavily vetted before they are put out.

P.S. I'm a securities lawyer.

There is legal room to count ordered units as sold, even tough they have not been shipped.
Cough* Nortel * Lucent et. all.

 

[Slay]

There is legal room to count ordered units as sold, even tough they have not been shipped.
Cough* Nortel * Lucent et. all.

Thank you, with your explanation both numbers from NPD and MS make perfect sense now.

 

[expletive]

To sway market perceptions where advantageous?

You think a few hundred thousand units are going to matter? They put a stake in the ground for end of June i dont see why so much effort is going into trying to debunk these numbers, seems like a horrible waste of time.

 

[scooby_dooby]

Ya it's a ridiculous notion.

Why bother faking numbers this early in the game? It would have aboslutely no impact on anything. They have hard deadlines in place for February and June that they have to meet regardless, so it would be absolutely pointless to exagerate #'s at this point in time.

Maybe NPD's hardware #'s were too low, which would account for the abnormally high 4:1 tie-in ratio

 

[Mr. Hanky]

You think a few hundred thousand units are going to matter? They put a stake in the ground for end of June i dont see why so much effort is going into trying to debunk these numbers, seems like a horrible waste of time.

The answer was given to the question posed, in general. There are plenty of reasons for a company to "lie" or PR spin. It's ridiculous to assert that a reason is so hard to come by in business. Whether or not it is worth it, is another matter altogether. It's doubtful we have the full context of the issue to examine from our view from the outside, to really say yes or no.

 

[scooby_dooby]

There are plenty of reasons for a company to "lie" or PR spin.

Like? Given the fact they have a 2.5million goal to meet in Feb, and 4.5million goal in June. Tell me 1 good reason they would bother lying about their numbers in Jan?

They will already be passed these milestones before the PS3 is even launched, so fudging numbers right now would do absolutely nothing. This isn't a general question, it's a question in this specific context.

 

[Mr. Hanky]

I guess that person should have worded the question more specifically. I'm sorry if this maligns your pristine perception of MS as a corporation. Your line of questioning seems to suggest that up to this point, you believe MS has not ever done anything at one time that caused someone to go, "Huh?" The answer is that they have done lots of "things", and those things do not simply cease to exist because you cannot conjure an explanation, given the data available to you.

 

[scooby_dooby]

I guess that person should have worded the question more specifically. I'm sorry if this maligns your pristine perception of MS as a corporation. Your line of questioning seems to suggest that up to this point, you believe MS has not ever done anything at one time that caused someone to go, "Huh?" The answer is that they have done lots of "things", and those things do not simply cease to exist because you cannot conjure an explanation, given the data available to you.

So because you can't mount a decent argument you resort to personal attacks, and try and label me as some MS worshipper.

Sorry, they are just a company, I could care less about whether MS is pristine.

The simple facts is there is not one good logical reason for them to lie, so unless YOU have one, you're doing nothing more than tossing around lame-ass conspiracy theories based on nothing. In fact, there are quite a few reasons to believe they are not lying.

"To sway market perceptions where advantageous?"

What market perceptions? Why would it be at all advantagous? Are you ever going to get around to defending your statement? Sorry but, 'all companies do wierd things' is not a compelling argument...