It's hard to answer that question as none of us know what the target for the 360 was.

- if the 360 was meant to accomplish the sales goals MS had, then it failed.
- if the 360 was meant to compete with the PS3 over the lifetime of this generation, then it's looking to have failed spectacularly.
- if the 360 was meant to 'further the brand' then it's got 2 problems - RRoD and the general belief that the 360 lacks the stamina to continue to compete. Could be seen as mostly a success though - kindof.
- if the 360 was meant to further the windows brand via games-for-windows, then it's a hilariously bad failure.

If it was meant to compete with the Wii/further MS's ambitions in any field other than consoles, then it's a failure.

If it was meant to damage sony's PS3 sales, then it's a success - but I don't see any reason that MS would want to do that... especially as nintendo are now the #1 is this market.

If it was meant to make money, then I've got no idea whether it's a success - the development costs + RRoD repairs + the guarantee would have eaten a lot of cash. XBL is a success, but that's tempered by the 'not so forward-thinking' decision to ship consoles without a harddisk...

But the biggest 'downside' is that MS focusing on the 360 have abandoned the mobile market to apple/nintendo/sony... If the next generation builds on connecting those devices to base-stations (as sony/apple seem very happy to do), then the 360 would be a strategic failure of the highest order.

As a console, it is/was a success... particularly in the NA market.

O i completely agree on some points.

I think the ps3 has a chance to sell as much as the wii i mean thats my opinion. I did not mean to sound like sony did want to lose 1st place on consoles thats not what i meant (or said). I meant that they were more concerned with the blu-ray. Now with blu-ray's victory they will foucs more on the console. thats what i meant.

But the 360 is only selling like what 7 months ahead of the 1st xbox.... and 360 came out with NOT ONE next gen system to compete against. I mean its not a question of 360 doing better its a question of was it worth it? Sony has lost a LOT of market share and 360 really didnt pick it up..... nintendo did. thats NOT a huge success for microsoft now is it.

@Dno: But that makes very little sence to me, after the PS1 and the PS2 Sony was in a position were they could have crushed Nintendo and Microsoft for good and been the number one console maker for a very very long time, sure Blue-Ray will make them lots if money... but for how long ??? will it last as long as the DVD ??? Consoles on the other hand will last forever and dropping the ball there will cost Sony much more in the long run, giving Nintendo and Microsoft the chance to gather new strength was the biggest mistake Sony ever made in the gaming industry IMO, had they continued with what the PS2 was doing they could have dominated the market for years to come... but that chance is dead and gone now...

For me Blue-Ray was nothing but a Pyrus victory for Sony... but I´m happy the way things turned out... lots of competition makes the maret better for all gamers, a fact fanboys like to ingnore... (I´m not calling anybody here a Fanboy... I just hate it when people want a company to dominate the market) 

When MS only overlaps with Nintendo in the game market while it overlaps with Sony in the distribution, games, online, and home entertainment markets, it's a moderate success for Microsoft.

MS didn't enter the game market to only sell games, they wanted a piece of the emerging download entertainment market and home theatre hub setup. Nintendo isn't even remotely interested in that market while Sony is attacking it full-force.

Beyond games sales, MS doesn't give a rat's ass what Nintendo is doing while a dominant PS3 could force them right out of the market entirely. 

ps3 is only about a million behind 360 in europe and its been out only a year in europe and 360 has been in europe for 2 years. ps3 will surpass 360 in europe this year because ps3 is now cheaper the cheapest blu ray player and has some quality games coming out for it

Two points on market share:

1.  Unit sales is not marke share.  How big the market will grow by the end of this generation (whenever that is) will affect how much "an X increase in units" will represent in market share.  

Remember, I said "what hasn't been proven".  I didn't say "This won't/can't happen"

 2.  Any noting of the market share at any historical point (before the end) doesn't represent what the market share will finally be.  One could have looked at Oct 2006 and say "360 has 100% market share", but that would not have counted for anything.

I haven't seen anything which leads me to believe there are any significant numbers of 360 owners out side of "XBOX1 owners" + "younger ones entering into that market segment".   

Not totally agreeing on the profitability of the 360 yet.  From what I read (and correct me if I am wrong), but the RRoD losses aren't even being charged against the Entertainment Division.  Sounds like a pretty artificial scenario to me.  Hopefully it all works out well for MS no matter how the accounting is skewed.... 

No, the 360 did not achieve its stated goal. 

I like how you decided it was successful at reaching MS' goals without examing MS' actual goals.

The goal of the Xbox project is to create a second profitable division within the many, many divisions of Microsoft. Aside from their core software division -- Windows/Office being their profit center -- Microsoft is vulnerable. They're trying to diversify, which is the whole reason for the Xbox project. The goal of the Xbox 360 is profit.

The original Xbox was intended to wedge into the market. For that purpose, it succeeded. It gave MS a base to build off of, and it was never expected to be profitable. According to Microsoft's plan, the second generation product, the Xbox 360, was supposed to be their profitable product.

The 360 is billions of dollars into the red and no real hope of becoming profitable. Next generation, perhaps.

IMO ask again when the 360 passes 28 million, by then we know how much their market expanded and if this is beyond the percentage of the gaming market expanding as a whole in addition to just upgrading XBox fans.

For Japan the 360 sold better than the original XBox did, but it can hardly be called a success, probably not worth the investment of attracting exclusives like Blue Dragon and Lost Odessey. It would have been quite an achievement to perform even worse than the original XBox performed there.

All major XBox titles already saw 360 sequels, so it will be interesting to see what titles Microsoft pumps out to attract new users. I expected a relative quick uptake of the 360 due to the XBox's premature total demise and a fast pace at which popular XBox games saw sequels on the 360, I also expect a slowdown for the road ahead. I think this will be the 360's last good hardware sales year (millions of Europeans and North Americans still haven't upgraded towards a 360 from the original XBox, once the bulk of them have I expect a significant slowdown).

So MS came out early with an unreliable product that is by current standards already "last gen technology".

I don't understand why consumers keep going back to MS.