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XBox (Games) Businesses

360 Sells 400k Units, New Stock This Weekend 64

Posted by Zonk from the we'll-see-how-that-goes dept.
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."
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360 Sells 400k Units, New Stock This Weekend More

360 Sells 400k Units, New Stock This Weekend

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  • where can i go (Score:1, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    to buy one for $1000? I missed out on all the ebay deals last weekend, and i feel like a moron.

  • Poll? (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Well if you go by the Slashdot poll you would think no one wants it.

    It becomes obvious that the vast majority of /.'ers are lying moron sheep that follow the crowd just like everyone else.

    • Re:Poll? (Score:3, Insightful)

      by KDR_11k ( 778916 )
      There's roughly 280 million people in the US, there are less than one million users on Slashdot. Even if no Slashdot user bought it that number would be quite attainable.
    • Or could it be that the majority of people out there that bought the 360 don't post on /.? Regardless of the fact that the polls on /. should not be used for any real statistical analysis, it seems to back up the comments that the majority of /. users have made regarding the system in the months leading up to release day.

      We're not "lying moron sheep" simply because you somehow think most of those 400,000 people (not a lot of people considering as of July '05 there are 295,734,134 people living in the US) t
    • It becomes obvious that the vast majority of /.'ers are lying moron sheep that follow the crowd just like everyone else.

      Quiet you! I'm not buying a Xbox360, but a Sony PS3!!

      Now, you'll have to exscuse me while I listen to my Celine Dione CD... Hrm... And also find out why my CPU usage is at 100%!
    • "vast majority of /.'ers are lying moron sheep that follow the crowd just like everyone else."

      I am not a lier.
      I conceed the other two.

  • Still confused on the sell-out history (Score:4, Interesting)

    by voice_of_all_reason ( 926702 ) on Thursday December 01, 2005 @02:50PM (#14159189)
    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?
  • 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.
  • At least we're getting some... :) My online retailer sent my unit last night, so I'll have either tomorrow or saturday. My local electronics shops are both gearing for the launch of the console, and both say they will have a few units for sale tomorrow, so I'm wondering if I shouldn't pick up a second set as well.
  • If Bill Gates buys an Xbox360, he loses $553. 400+153=$553. Seeing as he will probably buy all those 400,000, that's $221200000. Thats a lot of cash, even for Bill Gates.

  • Compare and Contrast (Score:4, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 01, 2005 @04:21PM (#14160197)
    ... the PSP's launch on March 24th to the 31st of the month. With hardware estimates around 620,000 ...

    http://psp.ign.com/articles/604/604548p1.html [ign.com]

    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).
    • I preordered about three months ago, and don't have one yet, so apparently nobody wanted to preorder one from that store in the last three months, otherwise Microsoft wasn't trying very hard to come in "just shy of the preorder numbers". But then again, why am I even responding to a post by an AC who claims he knows a guy who says that a Microsoft rep gave "gave him the impression"? That's about as lacking in credibility as you can get.

      • Re:Compare and Contrast (Score:1, Insightful)

        by Anonymous Coward
        I should have been clearer; when I said gave him the impression I literally meant that, I didn't mean that he told him or even implied anything.

        Basically, how he tells it is that every time he asked the Microsoft Rep how many XBox 360s they would get the Microsoft rep would answer "well, how many pre-orders do you have?" At first he thought that Microsoft was going to try to match all of the pre-orders they made to that point in time, but after he was told that his store (and every store in the area that he

  • What do you mean, "could be"? (Score:3, Informative)

    by Retroneous ( 879615 ) on Thursday December 01, 2005 @04:40PM (#14160365) Homepage
    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.
    • Amen to that.

      Exact same problem here.

      £20 deposit taken, from Dixons in my case, back in August. Phone call from them at lunch time to tell me to forget it. If I'm lucky, I *might* have it by Christmas. But don't get your hopes up. I go into the store and the arsehole manager basically laughs in my face.

      The only thing keeping me from saying I'll never darken the door of another Dixons again as long as I live is the knowledge that all high street chains have some stores which are worse than others. Back
    • "but if you just preordered the console and managed to get one - you might not have anything to play on it..."
      Well at least there's the Live Arcade. Not much consolation but I've heard that its games are just as addictive as the 360's own games, and just as viable a way to spend your time than any $60 game.
  • 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 mo
    • 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).
  • A Banc of America analyst has found November 2005 game sales to be "surprisingly bad" in this report: http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?st ory=7345 [gamasutra.com]. I think it'll be interesting to see how the new consoles fare in the current economic climate. Iraq, layoffs, the impressive American response to the tsunami, and Katrina hurt personal incomes a LOT. The current administration's benefit-cutting (whatever your political inclinations) also reduces the wiggle room in consumers' pockets.

    Plus, the ne
    • 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.
    • The current administration's benefit-cutting (whatever your political inclinations) also reduces the wiggle room in consumers' pockets.

      My "political inclination" would be to say that anyone taking a check from the feds because they need it to put a roof over their head and food on their table ought not to be buying videogames anyway. So, either you offered that as a complete non-sequitir - a "free shot" at the US government - or some people should have their benefits cut.

  • I've been to the following stores in the Philadelphia Metro area numerous times:

    1. 2 K-Marts
    2. Toys 'R' Us
    3. Target
    4. Best Buy
    5. Wal-Mart
    6. FYE
    7. Electronics Boutique
    8. Game Stop

    No 360s. Best estimates were "maybe right before the holidays", "January", or my favorite "March!"

    I j

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