InsideMicrosoft

Xbox 360 Wins Holiday Sales War, Misses 10 Million Mark

UPDATE: The source of this story was CNBC, quoting NPD group numbers. Problem is, NPD says they haven’t released the numbers for December yet, and won’t for a week, and that CNBC appears to have made up the data (though the November numbers are accurate). Great. Another wonderful bit of “news reporting” from TV news. TV news is like halfway between the internet and print, with none of the reliability of print and slower than the internet, and I am so sick of the shoddy job being done by TV news.

Great news for Microsoft: The Xbox 360 has won the first head-to-head holiday season against its console brethren. From November 1 to Christmas, Microsoft sold 2 million game consoles, while the Nintendo Wii moved 1.8 million units and Sony unequivocally lost with just 750,000 sold. The Wii was a surprising success, becoming a real hot item, but faces a tough future with few hot titles scheduled for the coming year, and Microsoft will have to fight to keep its lead and convince people that Sony will remain down where it is now.

Interestingly, Microsoft mixed its sales target of ten million by the end of the year, a target it probably should have never set. I’m sure they’d have liked to have sold another 564,000 consoles, but at least they won.

Here is the way things have looked at NexGenWars.com:

January 2nd, 2007 Posted by Nathan Weinberg | General, Xbox, Xbox 360 | one comment