MS not to reach 3 million in 90 days Target

xbdestroya said:
Well, released where though?

Because we all know the PS3 is going to 'launch' sooner than October. :p

(I am serious, though I jest)

I would say until they launch at least in 2 of the 3 main regions, unless they can sell multi-millions in japan and signifigantly close the gap there, but thy probably won't kick into high gear until end of 06 or early 2007, so MS wants to have a large install base at that point, and I would guess they are counting heavily on the June-Oct timeframe where they will be sellin in 30+ countries with sustained supply.

I think they'll need a few big games though to keep things moving. A summer release of Gears of War could be a huge boost for 360 sales.

I wonder if PS3 will suffer similar problems since they are also using IBM for their CPU fabs initially, and that has been the main bottleneck for the 360.
 
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xbdestroya said:
I'd love for there to be a financials/marketing sub-section of the console forum. ;)
Screw that, make a general financials/market strategy & analysis section - it's not only the consoles discussions that badly need such a section, imo!

Uttar
 
scooby_dooby said:
I would say until they launch at least in 2 of the 3 main regions, unless they can sell multi-millions in japan and signifigantly close the gap there....

I wonder if PS3 will suffer similar problems since they are also using IBM for their CPU, and that has been the main bottleneck for the 360.

Well, Cell's been in production for longer than the XeCPU - even if only on a limited basis. Not to mention that they have multiple non-IBM fabs in on it as well. So I'd be surprised if Cell yields ended up as a bottleneck. I'm expecting it to be RSX, just like it was GS in the PS2. Or maybe it'll be blu-ray drives that's the bottleneck, ya never know.

No I don't think Japan sales will close the entire gap at all (though I expect a couple million there by years end), I'm just saying that once PS3 launches, might as well start tracking the consoles against each other sales-wise rather than wait for NA or Europe. Regional levels of sales though will of course be crucial in determining trends, so I mean I see where you're coming from when you imply N America and the Fall.
 
Uttar said:
Screw that, make a general financials/market strategy & analysis section - it's not only the consoles discussions that badly need such a section, imo!

Uttar

Yes good idea! I agree, I've got tons to discuss just on the general PC side of things as well. :)
 
drpepper said:
They are in Japan... :rolleyes:
Japan isn't "everywhere". Learn to read before you think of the smart-ass reply.

I can't go in a store in NA find an Xbox 360. I'm not sure about Europe, but they're probably in the same boat.
 
Core system

Shifty Geezer said:
It's not that XB360's are having trouble selling! Seems more that they can't be made fast enough to sell them quickly.

I think core system sales is not so great. Every one likes premium version. My friend bought core system to sell on ebay for ~$350 and no one made bids! I think they should make only premium because this has nice accessories for only $100! This is great value! Core system is a bad value.
 
Alpha_Spartan said:
Japan isn't "everywhere". Learn to read before you think of the smart-ass reply.

I can't go in a store in NA find an Xbox 360. I'm not sure about Europe, but they're probably in the same boat.

Japan isn't everywhere but is included with your "everywhere" remark. Think before you type. You should have said, "with the exception of Japan."

Face it, the Japanese performance of 360 sales is underwhelming.
 
drpepper said:
Face it, the Japanese performance of 360 sales is underwhelming.

Face it? Not one person has stated otherwise. Point is it's largely irrelevant because on a global scale the thing is sold out, and the japanese marketplace itself is relatively small.
 
ihamoitc2005 said:
I think core system sales is not so great. Every one likes premium version. My friend bought core system to sell on ebay for ~$350 and no one made bids! I think they should make only premium because this has nice accessories for only $100! This is great value! Core system is a bad value.

The core system is a waste of precious resources. Why they even bothered with 2 SKUs is beyond me, other than milking the accesories market. However I think they still sold well as people seem desperate enough to get a 360, even if it means getting ripped off. I was considering one, but since you have to buy a HDD just to open up some of the features i was completely turned off.
 
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scooby_dooby said:
Face it? Not one person has stated otherwise. Point is it's largely irrelevant because on a global scale the thing is sold out, and the japanese marketplace itself is relatively small.

It's small, however it's relevant.
 
drpepper said:
The core system is a waste of precious resources. Why they even bothered with 2 SKUs is beyond me, other than milking the accesories market. However I think they still sold well as people seem desperate enough to get a 360, even if it means getting ripped off. I was considering one, but since you have to buy a HDD just to open up some of the features i was completely turned off.
The core system is a brilliant idea that will become apparent when the console has its first price drops and earns a more mainstream price tag.

Right now,the people who are buying the xbox360 are the hardcore who are willing to pay 399$ for the console and the 299$ price tag of the core system doesn't seem so tempting for the cheaper gamers.When the core system's price falls at 199 or even 149$ when it will be competting woh the revolution for the "cheap gamer's" money then you'll see why it's a great idea.MS will have a product both for the high-end market(xbox360 premium,maybe even with a HD-DVD drive at some point) and the "low end/mainstream" market (core system) THAT WILL BOTH PLAY THE SAME GAMES.
 
The core's a good idea, however the core at launch is just plain stupid.

It only makes an already terrible supply situation even worse, as 1/3 of your already tiny shipments are consoles people don't want, although they may sell, it only creates resentment.

No early adopter is gonna care about saving $60, and the supply issues were so bad they should've just shipped 100% premiums until well into this year.
 
Japan is now a small market???

If you don't win in Japan, just dismiss it's market as small.

I love how things get spinned around here.
 
Compared to all of Europe and North America it is small, especially when you consider interest for 360 is very low in that region, it's almost irrelevant to any discussion about worldwide sales.

In other words, Japan was never going to have a large impact on the 360's installed base for 2006, so why is it relevant to this discussion if they are not sold out in Japan?
 
Edge said:
Japan is now a small market???

If you don't win in Japan, just dismiss it's market as small.

I love how things get spinned around here.
It's not a small market but it has become really tireome watching people bring out the "Japan card" when talking about microsoft's consoles.The mega drive was a big failure in Japan and yet it was the only succesfull sega console.The saturn was a success in Japan(a much stronger n.2 at that time than the GC is there right now) and yet it was a catastrphy for Sega.Hell,even the original xbox was a big failure in Japan and yet managed decent worldwide numbers.

It is also very positve for MS the fact that just about every Japanese developer and franchise has actually dimished in popularity in the western markets.You name it,from heavyweights like metal gear solid and resident evil to medium franchises like Tekken and soul caliber and ridge racer.I'd even go as far as to say that even uber-blockbuster japanese franchises like the nintendo franchises or Gran tourismo have actually lost some of their importance as evident by the sales of their latest sequels.

Honestly where the next GTA goes is much more important that just about all 3rd party Japanese games combined.

The numbers don't lie and one look at any recent U.S/U.K(or other European) says it all.Yes the Japanese market is important(the n.3 market in the world,how can it not be important??) but its importance is diminishing.
 
So they won't reach their 90 day target...
But the only revised their June target down 500k (4.5M > 4M)? And the upper-limit is still the same (5.5M)....

I wonder if they are really confident of 4M by June, because it would seem wierd not to meet your 90 day target but still reach your 7 month target. Unless they were expecting their 3rd-plant online sooner.

We heard that Xbox360s were being manufactured in August. Thats 6-months work by February and still not 3M. Will they get another 1.5-3M out by June? Possibly 1.5M but I doubt anywhere near 3M.

I don't think this is all that gloomy for Xbox360 until we know PS3/Rev launch date and price though. The box's won't be flying off the shelves by then but they'll still be steadily selling.
 
scooby_dooby said:
Face it? Not one person has stated otherwise. Point is it's largely irrelevant because on a global scale the thing is sold out, and the japanese marketplace itself is relatively small.

It was important enough that MS decided to place major resources into launching there. That alone tells us just how important MS thinks it is.
 
Ty said:
It was important enough that MS decided to place major resources into launching there. That alone tells us just how important MS thinks it is.

Yeah how many Euro developers did MS seed compared to those in Japan?

Or how many Europe-specific releases are they working on compared to Japan-specific releases?

Historically, I heard Japan had higher software attach rates. They bought more games per console than other continents.
 
Guden Oden said:
If you're going to do something, aim high. (Unless you're Nintendo. :p) MS definitely took the right choice in making the 360 a high-performance piece of kit.

Anyway, these sales target topics are boring and pointless. It's not anything that should concern us as 3D tech fanboiiis IMO. If anyone find this interesting, why not go to a board centering on financials/marketing or such?

Yeah, but if they're having production difficulties, even a small decrease in power, probably not even 5%, can go a long way to increasing yields. Xbox could have launched with a 250mhz graphics chip, but they went for the almost perfect yields of a 230mhz graphics chip. I've heard it said that the x360 cpu was supposed to be on 65nm and not 90nm....well if 65nm wasn't ready, they could have dropped to say 2.8ghz and it would have been a rather inconsequential decrease in power that could dramatically improve yields. Wasn't their launch like 1/3rd the expected size? Maybe implementing something like speedstep could have helped, I'd imagine quite a few 3.8ghz presscotts would be melting down without that.

Dreamcast was an example of powerful yet conservative hardware design. Gamecube I'd say almost was, but got a bit too crippled prior to launch. It lost like what, 25% of the speed of its graphics chip only a few months prior to launch? It did let them hit a $200 price point though.

If the x360 cpu is the bottleneck, then Sony may escape it. Cell is running at the same speed, but spread out over more cores and may be able to hit 65nm. Even if Cell yields are poor, there are 3 potential suppliers of chips in IBM, Sony, and Toshiba, instead of just IBM for the x360 cpu.

I think core system sales is not so great. Every one likes premium version. My friend bought core system to sell on ebay for ~$350 and no one made bids! I think they should make only premium because this has nice accessories for only $100! This is great value! Core system is a bad value.

Maybe he just missed the boat now that the hype has died down and the 360s are more available. I don't think value was given much consideration when the systems were selling for over $1000.

Oh, and the Japanese market isn't that small, expect a big upset from Nintendo with their revolution there. IIRC correctly, the Japanese market is still larger than the European market.

The saturn was a success in Japan(a much stronger n.2 at that time than the GC is there right now)

Are you sure about that? The best selling Saturn game was Virtua Fighter 2 in Japan, and it didn't break 1 million sales. Gamecube has had several games that sold over 1 million copies in Japan alone. Plus, I think Dreamcast did better than Saturn in every market (slightly), yet Gamecube has done better than Dreamcast in perhaps every market but Europe.

Honestly where the next GTA goes is much more important that just about all 3rd party Japanese games combined.

PS3 exclusive isn't it?
 
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