| colonelstubbs said: As expected, 360 fans refuse to accept that the 360 is selling anywhere near the original xbox |
It's selling 29% faster. How can a Xbox 360 fan work around actuals? I've never really seen a X360 fan say that the X360 is blowing the Xbox out of the water. It's certainly a good bit higher, and the trend(s) show that the lead is increasing. But again...Who's saying that people aren't saying it's selling "near" the Xbox? (Likewise, what about PS3 fans arguing that it's selling near the PS3?)
JGarret - About X360 sales for the end of the generation. That's a hard one to figure out, as the lifecycle of the Xbox was certainly short, and we can assume that the X360 will last longer.
If you use the simple math that the X360 has outsold the Xbox by 29% Life to Date, we get around 31.3 million consoles by the end of the Xbox 360's lifecycle. I feel this is the absolute minimum - a worst, of the worst case scenarios.
If you look at trending, you know that the Xbox 360's lead is increasing versus the Xbox the further along sales go - as cited by others in this post. Also, the Xbox 360 should have a longer lifespan (as you said yourself).
Fortuately, the Xbox and Xbox 360 launched at the same time of the year (November), so we can certinly compare month by month sales pretty well, as both consoles have similar timespans (the Xbox did, however, launch about 3 weeks earlier in November. But I consider this not to be a big issue).
Xbox 360, YTD (3rd year on market, 2008): 3,871,000 Units
Xbox, YTD (3rd year on market, 2004): 2,370,000 Units
Xbox 360 YTD Lead: 1,501,000 Units as of Last Week (partial data for this week
Xbox 360 Lead Margin (This Year): 57.8%
So using those numbers, assuming the Xbox 360 had the same lifespan, and we took this new trend into consideration (the 57% YTD lead vs. the 29% LTD lead), we get 38.3m units sold if the X360 maintained a similar rate of sales (the 57%) from now on. A more likely scenario than the worst case 31.3m
However, again, this assumes that the Xbox 360 has the same lifespan as the Xbox (44 months of production). I would argue the Xbox 360 will be made longer than that, as would most market analysts, and official PR from Microsoft. So that's another factor in the equasion, as it would lead to higher likely sales. If the Xbox 360 had another extra 18 months on market for production (a good middle of the road number), we can tack on extra sales. Lets use average sales that the X360 has seen this year (645,000 Units/Mo sold). This gives us an extra 11.6m units sold.
Factoring it all together:
| Prediction | Low Estimation | Mid Estimation | High Estimation |
| Sales | 31,300,00 | 38,300,000 | 49,900,000 |
| Formula |
X * Y |
((X-V) * Z) + U | (((X-V) * Z) + U) + (ZZ * 18) |
V = Xbox at Week 138
X = Xbox Life to Date Sales (24.1m Units)
U = Xbox 360 Life to Date (week 138)
Y = Xbox 360 Life to Date Margin
Z = Xbox 360 Year to Date Margin
ZZ = Xbox 360 Year to Date Avg. Sales
And thats assuming the Xbox 360 doesn't change it's sales trends: MS could lower prices and increase its YTD margin even further, or sales could collapse due to some idiotic blunder. But I think that the X360 should wind up between the Middle or High numbers (I vote close to the high number).
Back from the dead, I'm afraid.
