Xbox 360 nears 25m global sales mark
Wii still streets ahead, though
The Xbox 360’s global installed base will have overtaken that of its predecessor by the end of the month, a Microsoft executive has forecast.
Mindy Mount, Corporate Vice President of Microsoft’s Entertainment and Devices Division, said in New York last week that the total number of Xbox 360s in use globally will reach 25m before December.
Microsoft shipped over 24m Xbox units by the time it discontinued the console in 2006. As of 30 September 2008, it had shipped 22m 360s worldwide.
That's well ahead of the 16.8m PlayStation 3s Sony has shipped up to the end of September this year. But both consoles have some way to go before they overtake the Wii. Nintendo had shipped 34.4m consoles by the end of September.
Despite the global economic slowdown, Mount was confident that the videogame industry will weather the storm.
“Certainly consumers are pulling in their purse strings a little bit,” she said. “In hard times, people want entertainment more than ever before.”
Microsoft’s September round of price cuts have helped to shift more Xbox 360s, and Mount claimed that its European console sales rose by 62 per cent month-over-month as a result.
COMMENTS
Where are my pre-prepard Sony figures of Lies
I forgot to post something about how well the PS3 hasnt sold... bugger
Err...
They can't count a replacement as a sale.... the corresponding refurb and resale would count though, but legitimately so.
They do now offer a fixed price replacement too, if yours breaks they send you a refurb one out with new warranty and on you go, good solution for units out of warranty!
Re: The big question however..
I would be very easy for Microsoft to ignore failed units. If retailers sell 4 units, 1 of which is a replacement, it's pretty easy for Microsoft to just NOT bother marking the numbers back down.
I wasn't suggesting that the retailers were sitting on them, they surely send them back to Microsoft, but knowing how dishonest Microsoft are, I suspect they don't bother marking the sold numbers back, based on failures.
Re: The big question however..
Probably very few are replacement units. The retailer is unlikely to sit on them or throw them in the bin, likely they go straight back to MS. I would guess that not even MS can spin the figures so that returned units are "sold" units.
The big question however..
Is how many of those 25m are replacements for failed units? I have had 3 failied Xbox360's. 1 of them replaced by Microsoft, but 2 of them swapped by the retailer, as they failed very early on in their life. When the retailer replaced them, they went through the till as a new sale.
I bet there are only about 20m ACTIVE Xbox360's out there....
