| thx1139 said: The original support (aka producing games and making hardware) was because the hardware on an piece by piece basis was never going to sell at a profit. That is not the case for the 360 so even after Xbox Next comes out (im guessing 2012) the 360 will continue to be sold. The following are realistic projections. Current 38 million 2010 - 10 million |
10 million for 2010 is feasible if Natal comes out in time for Christmas.
10 million for 2011 is high. All three consoles (with the possible exception of the PS3 back in its worst days, I don't know the exact numbers) have pulled in sales of at least 10 million for the past three years. That alone is impressive, but I don't see the 360 selling 10 million in its seventh year of existence. Only a dominant console with an unstoppable library can pull something like that off -- the earlier PlayStations only sold for so long because developers didn't give up making games for the PS2 until the middle of last year. We're in a new era now, where developing games takes a lot more time and a lot more money -- the core developers that are pushing the 360's sales right now are probably already working on games for Microsoft's next console, or allocating most of their resources to enable themselves to do that as quickly as possible. I would see all consoles of this generation tapering off their sales in 2011 in anticipation of the next generation -- 7 million sounds a lot more likely to me, with or without Natal.
I don't see 8 million in 2012 as possible unless some really industry-shaking games come out on the Natal platform. I see it more like this:
2010 - 10 million
2011 - 7 million
2012 - 7 million (that's if Natal really takes hold)
2013 - 3 million
2014 - 2 million
2015 - 1 million
For a lifetime total of about 68 million.
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