Inspired by the IGN article I read on this forum: http://gamrconnect.vgchartz.com/thread.php?id=192141&page=1

You have probably heard this mantra before. "Xbox One is selling well, it's just overshadowed by the record-breaking PS4." "Xbox One sales are healthy." 

But they're not. I disagree with this statement and I'm going to explain why here.

I've heard many times that Xbox One is ahead of Xbox 360 at the same time. First of all, Xbox 360 did not have a great start. Far from it. It was supply constrained at launch and it sold a measly 6.8m in its first full year. It wasn't until 2008 that it started selling decently (11m). The maligned "$600, no games" PS3 sold better than Xbox 360 at launch, and it was considered to be selling terribly at that time.

But even then, the Xbox One is being outsold by the Xbox 360, launch aligned, on a consistent basis. It's ahead because it had a good launch. Great even. But sales since then have been very poor by all accounts. It's even far from the first poor years of PS3 and 360.

Here are some rough numbers of how much those platforms sold in their first Jan-Sep period:

• PS3: 3.7m
• Xbox 360: 3.4m
• Xbox One: 2.7m

Xbox One is closer to current Wii U numbers (2m) than launch $600 PS3 ones. And those 2.7m have been achieved through many price cuts, free games and other deals. Even MS knows it's not selling "well".

The console has gone as low as 34k a week. The lowest it went before the kinectless SKU announcement was 37k. Lower than any week PS3 or Xbox 360 have ever had, until this year. The best week all year has been 180k. And that is with a $100 price cut, two free games, the biggest SW release of the year and a HW launch in some markets. 180k is not that high a number and by all means should not be that hard to hit for a healthy platform.

It should end up selling 5-6m on its first year. The GameCube sold 6m on its first full year. So yeah... it's not selling well.

How did you get the 5-6m number?  I'm not saying its wrong I'm just curious.

All very true and some great numbers to look at there.

But...

XOne will have so much support from 3rd parties that it can't do worse than GC/OG XB imo. My guess is it'll settle between to the two previous Xboxes in terms of sales, probably be a neighbour of the NES in the all time top selling consoles chart.

Consoles usually sell up to 50% of units in any given year during the last 3 months. The Xbox One has sold 2.7m Jan-Sep.

This. Ps4 can never dominate as much as Ps2 because Sony lost so much exclusivity with the Ps3 launch. Xone will be ahead of the original and im guessing under Ps3/360.

Wii U's 1st Jan-september was 1.3m. Why use its 2nd year to compare first years? Also, PS3 got a price cut in summer 2007 too.

Assuming this is another longer generation, they can probably sell 40 - 50 million units.

In my opinion, that would doing well.

Yeah, there really is no getting around it. The Xbox One isn't selling very well.

It's far from a complete disaster, of course, and Microsoft does have the money to spend to turn things around, but there is no escaping the fact that this has to be far below Microsoft expectations.

I'm curious where you think all those extra sales are gonna come from?  

It lost a huge portion of its market share in NA, last gen it was around 65% I think and now its under 50%.

Its obviously gonna do a lot poorer in Europe, basically Sony land and I'm not sure about the UK but I'm assuming they lost a good portion of market share there.

Japan is irrelavent and I see rest of the world doing around 5m including China. 

I don't see it reaching 60m.

Edit: I see it reaching 45-50m.

Interesting, I didn't know that it was selling lower than the ps3/360 loll, thanks