Newsbrief: As part of his CES keynote this evening, Microsoft's Steve Ballmer revealed the latest sales numbers for the Xbox 360 and its Kinect motion control device.
During his ebullient speech Ballmer commented regarding the Xbox franchise: "We invest for the longterm", claiming that "we're the world sales leader for the last year in consoles... We have 66 million Xbox users and [almost] 40 million Xbox Live subscribers."
These number of Xbox 360s is significantly up on the 57.3 million last revealed in October 2011, showing that the 2011 holiday season gave the company a not inconsequential boost.
Elsewhere in his presentation, Microsoft CEO played up the Xbox as an entertainment hub, not just a games machine, noting that the company has shipped over 18 million Kinect sensors to date. The motion sensing device had shipped 10 million units as of March 2011.
Always interesting when companies leave their core business behind to branch out. The fact that the Games tab is so far from the default start on the new 360 desktop is...disturbing. Don't leave behind the people who got you where you are today, Xbox!
66 million Xbox 360 users? Really? That would imply that they've actually manufactured somewhere between 75-85 million 360's then correct?
We have to account for the estimated historical failure rates of an estimated ~20%. (I personally know several people that have gone through 2, 3, even 4 failures).
66 million 'active' users is a stretch. Even if I apply my voodoo math.
Other factors to consider:
1) How many of this ~66mu are Refurbished? Previously Owned?
2) How many of these users also own more than one Console?
3) How many of the claimed 40 million LIVE subscribers are Gold? How many are on the Free Service? Return customers, and so on.
I'm cautious at best when I see claims & #'s like these.
66million is total amount. Nobody knows how many of these are duplicate or how many million constitute arcade model, kinect bundles. I am surprised by the numbers because their conferences are pretty embarrassing
I believe Ankit is correct. 66mu = the total amount manufactured to date.
When you adjust & bake in all the factors I previously mentioned, & others (e.g. Refurbs, Failures, What's in channel & on Shelf, Double attach rates, etc) the best case scenario for their active user install base would be something closer to around an estimate of 45-55'ish million active users.
To Camilo's point - yes... they've done about ~3x better than Xbox 1 - to date. Nintendo has done nearly 5x better with Wii than they did with the Gamecube. Kudo's to both. It's not an easy business to tackle.
I like how companies put a spin on the numbers to seem more successful. Sony comes up with holiday sales numbers (6.5 mil) of all PlayStation devices sold. Then Microsoft, instead of holiday numbers, decides to give us the total install base. I don't know why Microsoft didn't tell us how many holiday units were sold did i miss something?
66 million Xbox 360 users? Really? That would imply that they've actually manufactured somewhere between 75-85 million 360's then correct?
We have to account for the estimated historical failure rates of an estimated ~20%. (I personally know several people that have gone through 2, 3, even 4 failures).
66 million 'active' users is a stretch. Even if I apply my voodoo math.
Other factors to consider:
1) How many of this ~66mu are Refurbished? Previously Owned?
2) How many of these users also own more than one Console?
3) How many of the claimed 40 million LIVE subscribers are Gold? How many are on the Free Service? Return customers, and so on.
I'm cautious at best when I see claims & #'s like these.
When you adjust & bake in all the factors I previously mentioned, & others (e.g. Refurbs, Failures, What's in channel & on Shelf, Double attach rates, etc) the best case scenario for their active user install base would be something closer to around an estimate of 45-55'ish million active users.
To Camilo's point - yes... they've done about ~3x better than Xbox 1 - to date. Nintendo has done nearly 5x better with Wii than they did with the Gamecube. Kudo's to both. It's not an easy business to tackle.