| kowenicki said: But surely adjustments are due now... waiting for the shipments is a bit weak isnt it? Likewise the 360 numbers are going to be too low, its heavily undertracked in the US recently (this continues this week imo) and I wouldnt be surprised if this was the same in EMEAA too. |
No I think waiting for shipping numbers is the right thing to do.
Consider this (seemingly) strange message from theSource:
"Michael Pachter did tell me in email however that much of the X360 year over year rise came from a) free X360s given away with Windows 7, and b) X360s sold directly to distributors (some of these units apparently ended up in Brazil) - and Microsoft convinced NPD to count both."
This b) is something that is bound to happen sooner or later. The continuous (and possibly accelerating) decline of the US$ against all other major currencies in the past weeks opens up new ways for foreign distributors to get their stock. It seems that (if this Pachter info is true), XBox SouthAmerican distributors did buy from XBox NA because it turned out to be cheaper for them than centralized buying. Whatever is going on (not likely that such shenanigans will be tolerated by MS for long), a sizable part of those 200'000 undertracked XBoxes might have to be considered fake sales (that look great on the XBox NA billboard, but will simply dispappear from the XBox WW billboard). Total work-wide numbers will somewhat solve that problem.
It is also clear that MS cannot continue to throw free XBoxes around like there is no tomorrow. More sooner than later, thia has a detrimental effect in the sales chain (no reseller likes it when the stuff s/he is trying to sell is given away for free in other places).
