Insidb said:
I don't think it's at all unreasonable that there are millions of X1s on shelves; if the sold through numbers were as good as PS4's, MS probably wouldn't be so keenly focusing on shipped (not sold) numbers. What I think is unreasonable is that retailers would just interminably purchase X1 stock, if it wasn't selling or expected to sell. In the case of the latter, the inventory stock could be extremely high and not all that far afield from what I've seen at my retailers. You bring up an excellent point about the comparable X1/PS4 shipped numbers (unfortunately with no X1/X360 breakdown...): with sales being so close over the holiday, the PS4 selling so much better all year, and the 0.8M X1s already on shelves, why wouldn't the X1 inventory be the same or (more likely) greater than the PS4? |
Well, what I think is Microsoft still has the main support from retailers and gaming publishers (just see Activision with Call of Duty AW, Ubisoft with AC Unity and EA with FIFA 15) in USA and UK. They trusted Microsoft will deliver in the holiday season (with bundles and official price-cuts) and in fact they did.
That's why, in my opinion, retailers purchased so much XBO stock, like PS4 levels. They betted XBO would outsell PS4 in USA...So considering this, that's why a similar number to PS4 of units on shelves at the end of the year is reasonable, because the number of units on shelves probably come from the units produced for the last quarter shipments.
