More than 67 million Xbox 360 consoles have been sold in the U.S. since it first launched in 2005, Microsoft revealed this week, while the company has generated over $56 billion in retail sales from the console.
Yusuf Mehdi, the CMO of Microsoft's Interactive Entertainment Division, says on the Microsoft blog the Xbox 360 holds a 47 percent share of the current-generation console market in the U.S., based on data acquired by the NPD Group.
He put the continued success of the console down to strong sales of the motion-control Kinect technology, and new Xbox Live entertainment options.
More than 19 million Kinect hardware units have now been sold, he said, and Xbox Live has over 40 million members. Xbox Live subscribers spend an average of 84 hours per month on the console, according to Mehdi.
These figures compare to the 66 million Xbox 360s and the 18 million Kinects sold by January of this year. Before that, Microsoft had said that 57.3 million Xbox 360s had been sold by October 2011.
However, while Mehdi was keen to note that sales of the Xbox 360 are "defying gravity" and continue to increase year-over-year, there are signs that the Xbox 360 is slowing down.
I just want to point out something that gets lost a lot in hardware sales and is especially relevant for the 360: these numbers do not include used console sales (of which the developer sees no money), nor does it include repurchased systems due to hardware failure. Since the 360 had error rates reported as high as 80% during its early years and some customers claimed to have bought as many as 4 replacement models, I doubt the first number is accurate with the number of people who actually own a 360 (and certainly not the number of working systems), though it obviously reflects the number sold to date.
"Yusuf Mehdi, the CMO of Microsoft's Interactive Entertainment Division, claims that the Xbox 360 holds a 47 percent share of the current-generation console market on the Microsoft blog."
95.85 million Wiis
63.9 million PS3
67 million XBox360
----------------------
226.7 million consoles
At least, when it comes to the install base, the 360 is far far away from 47%, whatever is meant by the term "current-generation console market", it seems to be black number magic more than anything else.
Maybe, but in the same sentence he is talking about the 67 million lifetime sales, so who knows, what he is referring to. Besides, I would doubt a 47% market share for the 360 for this year as well, the console is non existant in Japan and constantly in the last place in europe when it comes to the install base.
The chart shows the normalized US console hardware sales by year on the market, it's simply not possible to get a current market share from this chart, because the purpose of this chart is to show how consoles sold at a certain point of their lifetime compared to other consoles at the same point of their respective lifetime.
To say the performance of the 360 in europe and japan is not relevant is a little bit strange, when all hard numbers in the blog entry -67 million 360, 19 million Kinect, $56 billion retail revenue- are worldwide numbers. Besides, MS sold the majority of it's consoles outside the US, so I would say sales outside the US are pretty relevant.
I'm not going to mince words here. This 67m figure is BOGUS.
I've lost count on the # of friends/family that have had 1, 2, 3, even 4+ failures. Not to mention, you have to factor in how many times you've sold the same Xbox into the same Household. Several people I know have bought more than one 360 over the course of the past 7 years. For example... new Slim version + Kinect and so on. They didn't even bother sending it in to get it refurbished.
They might be 47% in say Redmond Washington. They do NOT have 47% penetration globally - by any 'bean counting' measure. Sales of all Consoles are down or off. 47% of perhaps trying to clear inventory at bargain basement sale costs might actually start putting this into more focus.
This smacks of desperation. They are actually slipping into the #3 position. Even with an amazing portfolio of games.
Lastly; it's also why they're trying to 're-position' the 360 as a glorified DVR device; fan it out to include Movies/TV/etc.
@Christian - completely agree. The other metric I use that I feel is more meaningful is 'active users'. Under that light the volume of active Consoles users per household starts bringing that volume down by another ~25-35%. (due to double attach rates, failures/refurbs, etc)
"I've lost count on the # of friends/family that have had 1, 2, 3, even 4+ failures. Not to mention, you have to factor in how many times you've sold the same Xbox into the same Household. Several people I know have bought more than one 360 over the course of the past 7 years. For example... new Slim version + Kinect and so on. They didn't even bother sending it in to get it refurbished. "
Well the failures should be under warranty and wouldn't count towards sales. Buying a new version is just as likely to have happened for the PS3 (less so for the wii) as it's had a major hardware revamp also. Really it's all anecdotal; I know people who have had launch 360s that are still running, I know people who had 3 die in the first 2 years. I also know people with 3 PS3s/have sold and re-bought ps3s, and people that have a wii hooked up to every tv in their house. The law of large numbers isn't kind to anecdotal evidence.
Very much so Adam. It is part of the reason the PS2 sold so many, because they broke and people bought a new one or wanted the slim version later. Microsoft isn't the only company that counts those sales as every single one of those companies do.
By the end of 2009 the PS2 already sold 1.5 billion software units, which gave the console an attach rate above 10, this attach rate was higher then that of todays consoles. It shows the argument of the high PS2 hardware sales due to replacement is false, otherwise the PS2 would have had an attachment rate higher then ever measured by any console in history.
"Xbox 360 holds a 47 percent share of the current-generation console market."
This must be a US only stat. PS3 has been fairly consistently outselling 360 in the last few months in almost every other major market and pretty much all of the minor markets which together represent much more than 50% of the global market. Based on GFK/Chart Track etc outside of the USA, PS3 has a c. 10-12m unit lead...
Hardware sales are interesting, but since hardware is a break even at best, I think it's more important to look at software sales.
From all the data I've seen, Xbox consistently outsells the PS3 with 3rd party software like Call of Duty. And for MS and SONY's successful exclusives (Uncharted, Little Big Planet, Halo, Gears, etc), MS again sells many more units. I believe that even Halo ODST outsold any of the (single) Uncharted series.
I'd appreciate more articles about software sales. At least as many as the industry seems to print about hardware sales. It's great to know how much hardware is out there because that's how many people you can sell to, but purchase intent should not be discounted. If one platform has more people buying a game on it than the other, that's TONS MORE MONEY going to that hardware manufacturer.
"Hardware sales are interesting, but since hardware is a break even at best, I think it's more important to look at software sales."
I completely agree, but if I try to look this numbers up, I have no problem finding cumulated software sales for the Wii and the PS3 reported by Nintendo and Sony, but it seems impossible to find these numbers for the XBox360, maybe I am just looking in the wrong places and somebody else can give me this number.
To put things in perspective:
Wii total software sales till March 31st 2012: 814 million
http://www.nintendo.co.jp/ir/pdf/2012/120426e.pdf
PS3 total software sales till Match 16th 2012: 568 million
http://www.scei.co.jp/corporate/data/bizdataps3soft_sale_e.html
If it is the case that Microsoft isn't reporting worldwide lifetime software sales for the 360, I would suggest this could be the case, because these sales don't look as good as you would expect, compared to the Wii and the PS3.
From a publisher side I've seen numbers for all of them. Very interesting stuff. Stuff I wish was more public and talked about (repeat). :)
The other one is iOS vs. Android vs whatever (RIM, Win8 RT). We all know that Android has more devices, but most people reading are not being paid from hardware, we want to know the purchase intent and numbers for software sales. Obviously if you had to choose which to develop for (today), even though they have smaller numbers, it'd be unanimous that people would develop for iOS (again, today).
This article is wrong. The 67 million number is not what has been sold in the U.S. It's what has been sold worldwide. The source article doesn't claim that 67 million is a U.S. number. It says this:
"Since 2005—when we launched Xbox 360—we have sold 67 million consoles and have generated more than $56 billion at retail, and we’re still going strong in our seventh year."
The Wii has sold about 39 million in the U.S. and the 360 is somewhere below that. I can't recall the specific number. It's something like 30 million or 34 million.
Honestly the Kinect, as Microsoft positioned it - the saviour and innovator for core console games - is a failure. It's a gimmick, a slightly better Eye Toy, nothing more nothing less. It will not help Microsoft move into the next generation if they continue to fool themselves that it's something more than that.
95.85 million Wiis
63.9 million PS3
67 million XBox360
----------------------
226.7 million consoles
At least, when it comes to the install base, the 360 is far far away from 47%, whatever is meant by the term "current-generation console market", it seems to be black number magic more than anything else.
The chart shows the normalized US console hardware sales by year on the market, it's simply not possible to get a current market share from this chart, because the purpose of this chart is to show how consoles sold at a certain point of their lifetime compared to other consoles at the same point of their respective lifetime.
To say the performance of the 360 in europe and japan is not relevant is a little bit strange, when all hard numbers in the blog entry -67 million 360, 19 million Kinect, $56 billion retail revenue- are worldwide numbers. Besides, MS sold the majority of it's consoles outside the US, so I would say sales outside the US are pretty relevant.
I've lost count on the # of friends/family that have had 1, 2, 3, even 4+ failures. Not to mention, you have to factor in how many times you've sold the same Xbox into the same Household. Several people I know have bought more than one 360 over the course of the past 7 years. For example... new Slim version + Kinect and so on. They didn't even bother sending it in to get it refurbished.
They might be 47% in say Redmond Washington. They do NOT have 47% penetration globally - by any 'bean counting' measure. Sales of all Consoles are down or off. 47% of perhaps trying to clear inventory at bargain basement sale costs might actually start putting this into more focus.
This smacks of desperation. They are actually slipping into the #3 position. Even with an amazing portfolio of games.
Lastly; it's also why they're trying to 're-position' the 360 as a glorified DVR device; fan it out to include Movies/TV/etc.
@Christian - completely agree. The other metric I use that I feel is more meaningful is 'active users'. Under that light the volume of active Consoles users per household starts bringing that volume down by another ~25-35%. (due to double attach rates, failures/refurbs, etc)
Well the failures should be under warranty and wouldn't count towards sales. Buying a new version is just as likely to have happened for the PS3 (less so for the wii) as it's had a major hardware revamp also. Really it's all anecdotal; I know people who have had launch 360s that are still running, I know people who had 3 die in the first 2 years. I also know people with 3 PS3s/have sold and re-bought ps3s, and people that have a wii hooked up to every tv in their house. The law of large numbers isn't kind to anecdotal evidence.
By the end of 2009 the PS2 already sold 1.5 billion software units, which gave the console an attach rate above 10, this attach rate was higher then that of todays consoles. It shows the argument of the high PS2 hardware sales due to replacement is false, otherwise the PS2 would have had an attachment rate higher then ever measured by any console in history.
This must be a US only stat. PS3 has been fairly consistently outselling 360 in the last few months in almost every other major market and pretty much all of the minor markets which together represent much more than 50% of the global market. Based on GFK/Chart Track etc outside of the USA, PS3 has a c. 10-12m unit lead...
Yes it does now. As Kris says in the next post, they have had to clarify this post original posting.
From all the data I've seen, Xbox consistently outsells the PS3 with 3rd party software like Call of Duty. And for MS and SONY's successful exclusives (Uncharted, Little Big Planet, Halo, Gears, etc), MS again sells many more units. I believe that even Halo ODST outsold any of the (single) Uncharted series.
I'd appreciate more articles about software sales. At least as many as the industry seems to print about hardware sales. It's great to know how much hardware is out there because that's how many people you can sell to, but purchase intent should not be discounted. If one platform has more people buying a game on it than the other, that's TONS MORE MONEY going to that hardware manufacturer.
I completely agree, but if I try to look this numbers up, I have no problem finding cumulated software sales for the Wii and the PS3 reported by Nintendo and Sony, but it seems impossible to find these numbers for the XBox360, maybe I am just looking in the wrong places and somebody else can give me this number.
To put things in perspective:
Wii total software sales till March 31st 2012: 814 million
http://www.nintendo.co.jp/ir/pdf/2012/120426e.pdf
PS3 total software sales till Match 16th 2012: 568 million
http://www.scei.co.jp/corporate/data/bizdataps3soft_sale_e.html
If it is the case that Microsoft isn't reporting worldwide lifetime software sales for the 360, I would suggest this could be the case, because these sales don't look as good as you would expect, compared to the Wii and the PS3.
The other one is iOS vs. Android vs whatever (RIM, Win8 RT). We all know that Android has more devices, but most people reading are not being paid from hardware, we want to know the purchase intent and numbers for software sales. Obviously if you had to choose which to develop for (today), even though they have smaller numbers, it'd be unanimous that people would develop for iOS (again, today).
Oh well.
"Since 2005—when we launched Xbox 360—we have sold 67 million consoles and have generated more than $56 billion at retail, and we’re still going strong in our seventh year."
The Wii has sold about 39 million in the U.S. and the 360 is somewhere below that. I can't recall the specific number. It's something like 30 million or 34 million.