3 guesses as to the low number - 1. They are stopping production of the current Premium and Core systems at some point between now and June. 2. They are going to be stockpiling systems for a price cut with the new models at some point after the June quarter. 3. They are using Jedi Mind Tricks to boggle the minds of Nintendo and Sony fanboys. I really dont see how, aside from a shortage of the new 360s, that it could sell that poorly. This is because of all the games coming out that'll do well worldwide (Crackdown, GRAW 2, Mass Effect, and the many other good q1/2 games). Remember, in the June-Aug shipment numbers last year, MS stated they only shipped 0.9m units....This was because they were saving up 4.4m units for the holiday quarter. IMO, MS is going to cut expectations for the first 2 quarters (why Im not sure), so when the August-December time rolls around, and we get a price cut 360 v2 with GTAIV and Halo3, we'll see about 8m units shipped in the 2nd half of the year. 20m units by the end of this year shipped (sold or not, who knows). Just a few highlights for the 360 in 2006 - 360 had 4 million sellers - Gears of War, Madden 06, Ghost Recon and Oblivion, compared to Halo and Ghost Recon 1 for the Xbox in it's first year (actually GR1 only had 900k if I remember right). This number doesn't include RSV and CoD3, nor CoD2. CoD2 was a 1.3m+ unit seller, and CoD3 and RSV should reach 1m this year total. Thus far, the 360 is doing 100% better business in Japan this year to date. If those numbers hold, we could see the 360 actually beat the first Xbox's numbers in only 26 months. Despite not having complete charts for December, the 360 had the 2nd best year in MS history for software sales - next to 2004 with Halo2. Should the Dec. chart ever get games below 70k, we should see it get nearly 21m s/w units for the year. Again, 20m units shipped this year. With Halo3 coming out, a price drop AND GTAIV, the 360 could break 35m or even 40m units of software this year in the US alone. Very very very high, but do-able. Halo3 and GTAIV should get no less than 6m units between the both of them this year. That doesn't include other guarenteed million sellers in Crackdown, Madden 08 and maybe even GH2.
Back from the dead, I'm afraid.
