Estimated XBox 360 Bundles in the Americas:

I was curious about the sales breakdown of different Xbox360 SKUs since it can be said to be cheaper than the Wii or as expensive as the PS3 depending on how you want to spin your argument.  Normally a PS3 fanboy will state that all XBox360 sales are attributed to the $199 Arcade model which is half the price of the PS3.  Someone will point out the fallacy of this and then a XBox fanboy will state that Arcade sales are a very low percentage of sales.  I wanted to see how large or small a percentage of sales are attributed to the Arcade SKU.

Luckily the NA Xmas bundles gives us a way to calculate this information.  Kung Fu Panda and Lego Indiana Jones: The Original Adventures are bundled with the Pro and Elite SKUs while Sega Superstars Tennis is bundled with the Arcade SKU.  I’m assuming that these bundles are available throughout NA and there are no other bundles available.  (Is this a valid assumption?)

Sales for Americas as of 2008/11/9:

This gives a total of 105.5k bundled Xbox360’s sold which is just short of the 114k consoles sold.   The 8.5k units unaccounted for are probably unbundled consoles.  The difference between Kung Fu Panda and Lego Indy are identical which is a good sign for this calculation.

It appears the Arcade model accounts for ~37% of SKUs sold (possibly more due to the unbundled consoles).  As usual reality lies somewhere between the Xbox360 and PS3 fanboys view points.  Unfortunately I cannot break apart the Pro & Elite sales.  I would appreciate it if anyone had information on the breakdown of the other SKUs.  Discuss.

Edit: Updated first table to make it clearer.

Edit2: Added weekly table

great work. interesting!

I imagine those numbers for the Arcade will grow as we get closer to and include Black Friday and more casual/family friendly titles are released (Banjo, Lips and YitM).

Arcade doesn't seem like such a worthless SKU despite the lack of a hard drive now. Atleast the consumers aren't feeling that way since It's making up close to 40% of 360 sales. I imagine the Elite sales won't go higher till they drop the price of that.

I'm not sure about everywhere else but where I live (Manitoba, Canada) a lot of places don't even carry the Arcade bundle.

@Darth Tigris

I would agree.  But also for the reason that parents will only remember "XBox 360" and just buy the cheapest SKU.

For interest sake I took a look at the previous week's numbers.

Sales for Americas as of 2008/11/2:

Assuming Pro + Elite bundle sales to be 43.5k (the lower of the 2 pack-in games).

The higher percentage of unbundled consoles makes looking for trends a bit harder since the unbundled consoles could be any of the SKUs.  The higher number was probably due to the bundled SKUs not being available everywhere (or my numbers are out to lunch).

Oddly the % of Pro & Elite SKUs sold increased compared to last week.  This increase in non-Arcade units is probably due to the fact that consumers buying the XBox360 for GeoW2 are more likely to be hardcore (I hate that term).  The Arcade did see an increase in sales of 20% while the Pro & Elite saw a 46% increase in sales.  I'm guessing next weeks overall sales to be flat, but a larger proportion of Arcade SKUs to be purchased.

@MonstaMack

Agreed.  MS has increase the value of both the Arcade and Pro models by adding the HDMI port.  Plus the Arcade now has 512MB of memory with the option of buying a 20GB referb HDD for $29.99.  These upgrades to the lower models decreases the relative value of the Elite.  It doesn't help the price difference between the Pro and Elite has increased while the feature differences has decreased.  MS should either drop the Elite or increase the HDD size for the same price.

@cool48

Do the stores carry any Arcade SKUs?  I just checked FutureShop here in Ontario and they do not list the Arcade bundle online (but they do have an arcade).  I will have to check next week's numbers to see if the pattern holds up or not.

Added this weeks numbers and updated for the previous weeks corrections.

The number of unbundled consoles sold has been dropping (although the correction did increase this number) which should lead to more accurate numbers for the number of Arcade SKUs sold.

Both the % of Arcade and Pro & Elite bundles have slightly increased by approximately the same amount. This indicates that the Arcade model and its price is not the driving force of XBox360 sales.