Todd Bishop on Microsoft's Xbox 360 Shortage Claim Options

[Xbox-Scene]

Todd Bishop on Microsoft's Xbox 360 Shortage Claim Posted by XanTium | March 17 23:53 EST | News Category: Xbox360

From Todd Bishop at seattlepi.nwsource.com: [QUOTE] As the numbers show, Xbox 360 unit sales were nearly 24 percent higher during the recent holidays, compared with the same period a year before. That would appear to support the company's assertions. Some in the industry are still skeptical about the way this has played out. There have been reports of some Xbox 360 models being out of stock in some stores. But have the shortages alone been enough to change the sales standings? It's worth noting that the situation wasn't severe enough to garner widespread attention until Microsoft itself went public with word of shortages the day before the NPD Group released its data for January, the first month in which the PS3 was ahead of the Xbox 360. The timing "was a little suspicious," said Michael Pachter, an analyst with Wedbush Morgan Securities, via phone today. Normally, he said, he would have expected the company to talk about the shortages sooner. "Right now, you can go into retail and find an Xbox (360) pretty much everywhere, today," Greenberg (Xbox 360 group product manager) said. "But we don't consider ourselves fully in stock today because there are retailers who want to buy more consoles from us, and we're unable to supply that." [/QUOTE] Full Story: seattlepi.nwsource.com

[Flagg3]

Microsoft cannot be serious. If anything, those numbers prove the exact OPPOSITE of what Microsoft is claiming.

Of course sales increased from 2006 to 2007! Did Microsoft somehow think that the world of video game economics would somehow turn upside down, and that sales would not increase?

Interestingly enough, sales of both the Wii and the PS3 both increased SUBSTANTIALLY more than 24% from 2006 to 2007, as is expected of all consoles at this stage of their life.

It is far more believable that supply is constrained because they are launching new models, and that would cast Microsoft in a much better light then claiming that they somehow could not possibly forecast sales rising from 1.6 million to 2 million during the Halo 3 holiday season. The fact that sales increased only 24% year over year this past Christmas is actually a VERY BAD sign for Microsoft, considering that this past holiday had a tremendous lineup of quality exclusives, not the least of which was Halo 3. It is very unlikely that they will have such a tremendously lopsided release year again, so it is really getting more and more imperative for Microsoft to drop prices or at least dramatically improve the value of the bundles when compared to the PS3. Blu-ray is not an option, but larger hard drives, built in Wifi, rechargeable batteries will all help combat the perceived value advantage of the PS3.

As someone who owns 4 Xbox 360's, I will frankly be EXTREMELY upset with Microsoft if they blow this generation again, and they abandon the Xbox 360 after only 4 years as they did with the first model. The fact that Microsoft has been so quick to respond to every negative report reaks of desperation on their part, which only proves how serious they think the numbers actually are.

[bucko]

I've got a feeling there waiting on 65NM GPU (AKA Jasper?) I think they want to get rid of ROD once and for all. It's hurt them pretty bad, surely they are trying to get new boards out with better cooling?

[ChrisF]

For what it's worth I saw Elites stocked at Best Buy for the first time in >4 months. It was rare to even see Premiums there and they only had arcades for most of the holidays. There was even a display stack of premiums which was never the case during the holidays (which is odd, but I rarely saw any Premiums much less a stack worth). This was pretty much the story for every store in my area, gaming, chain, big box, etc...even Costco was low to out several times. Now I'm not saying that no one ever had a single unit or that I'm on the phone daily scouring but just randomly walking into stores there was little to no stock and it was just a week or so ago that I saw things had changed.

Given what I've seen in the past 4 months and talking to other people...there is some kind of supply disruption. Maybe there's a positive spin going on but it would be really hard to believe that this is all total fabrication. While the timing of their announcement might be "suspicious" it certainly seems to jive with real world.

This post has been edited by ChrisF: Mar 18 2008, 12:57 PM

[rooter75]

What he said ^^ is very similiar to the scene in my area. There has been low to nill stock on 360 throught December and January and only recently have display been revitalized and stock seems to be back to readily available. Again why or how bad it really was is hard to say but there is something to the story MS has fabricated. XD

[dokworm]

I think stock may have gotten low, but I doubt that anyone that wanted to purchase a 360 couldn't do so.

The supply may have been a little tight, but it seems unlikely that it was bad enough to effect the sales data in any real way. I think MS had a slight supply problem, but played it up to have an excuse to save face against the PS3 numbers. There will probably be price cuts in all regions if the sales boost in the UK continues, otherwise the UK price cut may actually hurt sales in all other regions as people 'wait' for the price cut or the rumoured 60GB base model, rather than buy now.

[Malibuman]

All the stores in my area, Walmart's, Best Buy, Circuit City, Target, etc, have had plenty of 360's. Never been a shortage in my area.