NPD: 600,000 Xbox 360s Have Sold in U.S.

January 17, 2006 By Geoff Duncan

The NPD Group says Microsoft has sold a mere 600,000 Xbox 360 gaming consoles in the U.S. since their November launch, putting Redmond's sales goals in doubt.

An NPD Group analyst said Friday that Microsoft had sold only 600,000 units of its Xbox 360 gaming consoles in the U.S. since their debut November 22, 2005. If accurate, the pace of Xbox 360 sales would put Microsoft well behind pace for its stated goals of selling 3 million systems withing 90 days of launch, and 4.5 to 5.5 million Xbox 360 systems by mid-2006.

Overall, Xbox 360 systems were in short supply over the end-of-year holiday season, frustrating some customers and leading analysts and retailers to predict sales below Microsoft’s expectations. For its part, Microsoft says it is working hard to meet demand for the systems, and that a third manufacturing facility will be coming online in February, 2006, increasing supply of the systems.

Meanwhile, while Xbox 360 systems are hard to find in Europe and the U.S., Japan seems to have a surfeit of systems, where sales of the systems have been described as “modest” to “disappointing,” with only an estimated 30 to 40 percent of available Xbox 360 systems selling during the December launch, and Media Create Co. claiming the Xbox 360 garnered just 2.1 percent of Japanese hardware sales during the first week of 2006.

Showing 3 comments

Hugh at 3:01pm 18th January 2006 Dude, I heard that MS is losing like $200 per Microsoft Xbox 360. According to this article at Joystick the Xbox 360 costs $715 dollars to make: http://www.joystiq.com/2005/12/28/xbox-360-costs-7...
Craig at 12:03pm 18th January 2006 The $200.00 loss per console is for the original XBOX. The disappointing sales are due to there lack of supply and the fact that it really doesn't have 200 original titles at launch even though they said they would. The lack of a truely made for XBOX 360 game is another fault. As for the reason Japan stays away from the XBOX is more of a Japan only buying Japanese products then it is that the XBOX isn't a good product. The original XBOX clearly is a better product than Playstation and Nintendo, but it still lacked an impact in Japan even leading to the embarrassment of some popular Japanese models.
Hugh at 9:34am 17th January 2006 Originally I had read that MS was losing like $72 dollars per console. Then in a message board somewhere an actual MS employee posted saying that Microsoft is losing like $200+ per console. I think with all of the manufacturing problems and poor distribution, not to mention that there are no good games for the console, Microsoft has a huge problem on their hands. Heck even the Japanese are smart enough to stay away from it.