Okay, everyone post your replies to these two questions, and then let's see who comes out closest later on.

1.  When do you think Microsoft will finally sell the 10 million consoles they promised to shareholders they were going to sell by end of 2006?

2.  Do you think Microsoft will sell 12 million consoles by the end of June 2007, as they had promised in their revised projections to shareholders?

1. At the end of June. X360 sold around 180k during april after NPD in America, which means that they would need almost to months to sell the remaining 300k. Of course we also the other markets, but my guess is that MS sells around half of what they sell in NA in the rest of the world. This would put them at around 9.95m a month from now, and then they would need a couple of days to sell the rest. 2. No, no way.

1. June sounds about right. 2. They said they would ship 12 million by June, not sell, I believe. They scaled back their predictions from a bullish 13-15 million. If they get 10 million by June, they will have had to ship between 500,000 to 700,000 consoles to distribute among all territories. So, they will miss their shipping estimate by over a million.

I'll do #2 first since technically if I'm not mistaken MS only ever said "shipped" when it came to 12 million by July 1st.  It should be easy since they could just ship however many they need to meet their target.  However, I don't know if retailers will go for it again.  They still haven't sold the 10 million MS shipped by last Christmas much less the million shipped since then.  MS was able to get away with that trick last time since it was the first time they did it, retail 360 inventory was lower, and MS could play the Vista card.  Given that at current sales rates MS has already shipped enough 360's to last through August I don't know how easy it will be to stuff another million systems into store inventories.  The sad thing MS had promised 15 million by July 1st before lowering it to 12-13 million which by sane business practise is still unreachable.

As to #1 I'd say the 360 will hit 10 million in June, or about 1 month before the Wii does and about 6 months late.

Those are seriously loaded questions.

The 12 mill, will be shipped to shops, not to customers...

I was too slow..

Why would they report to retailers? I'm pretty sure it was the CFO who gave the report and at the end of quarter ending December 2006.

3 reasons off the top of my head, 1) retailers are who pay them, 2) it allows the to report inflated numbers, and 3) they have some control over shipped figures.  As we saw in December, if consumers aren't buying enough 360's for retailers to order enough for you meet your goal, then just send the 360's anyways, goal met.  Also, just imagine if MS had said they would sell 10 million to consumers by the end of 2006 and say 13 million by July 1st, well they did less than 9 million and 10 million.  That doesn;t just make fanboys cry, that makes shareholders ask ask serious probing questions.  The very kind of questions MS would probably prefer not being asked at the moment.

The conversation was an earnings call between Microsoft's CFO and analysts. I looked it up.  However, it does appear they were talking about numbers shipped and not numbers sold. 

Even when coorporations say "sold", and unless they specifically state otherwise, it's "sold to retail".

Unless the have their own online and offline stores (as say Apple does), their customers are always retailers. And as long as it's paid for and/or in the hands of their customers, financially, it's as good as sold.

We can debate how long will it take them to sell all the stock they shoved under the retailers throat, but they are on track to meet both forecasts.