360 Numbers don't add up!

[Monty]

cleveland122 said: 2. Initial sales projections had Microsoft selling 2.5 M to 3 M for the November and December time frame. It's a goal they were hoping to hit and they shipped enough units to cover this goal. The sales just didn't happen. A price decrease would have done wonders for them. 4. Have you ever been to a store. I live in a tiny city Population approx. (20,000). And I go to Meijer and I've there are over 10 360's sitting there. I went to Best Buy and I saw at least 40 xbox 360's there (I have 2 best buys within 15 minutes of driving). My point? I bet most of time there has been over 1,000 xbox 360's within a half hour drive of me this holiday season. And I don't live near a city that many people have heard of.

What?!?! How do you figure the 360 "sales just didn't happen"???? Or how are you inferring that the sales were not good? Early projections put it in the 1.2 million area for December in the US... that's better than the Xbox 1 ever did in its 5 years since it's been out, not to mention better than anything the GameCube ever did. It'd put it on par with the PS2 (the best selling console of all time) over the past couple years (PS2 did 990,000 in 2004 and 1.5 million in 2005). It very much held its own against 2 launches and put up some excellent numbers. As for your anecdotal stock evidence, it is meaningless. The fact that you saw 90 Xbox 360's in a city of 20,000 people is hardly evidence that 2+ million are sitting on store shelves. I was at a Toys R Us a week and half ago and they were sold out. Ditto for an EB Games I was at... sold out. What does that mean? Nothing... it varies GREATLY from region to region and chain to chain.