In advance of next week's E3 show, Microsoft has released data showing continued sales success for the Xbox 360, which has now sold over 55 million units worldwide, and the Xbox Live service, which now has over 35 million members.
Xbox unit sales have "changed the tail" for a typical hardware cycle, Microsoft says, with gains in its fifth and sixth year of availability, including a 29 percent year-over-year sales increase so far in 2011.
"2011 will be another record year for Xbox 360 and no other console in history can make that claim six years into their lifecycle," the company boasted in a press release, sharing a graph of recent system sales trends (below) to illustrate the point.
Microsoft cites the increasing variety of non-gaming entertainment options available through Xbox Live as a key driver of growth in both hardware sales and Xbox Live adoption.
Xbox Live users now spend and average of 60 hours on the service every month, contributing to a combined 2.1 billion monthly hours of Xbox Live use monthly. That includes roughly 30 hours of non-gaming video consumption per user, according to data released by Microsoft earlier this week.
"Xbox used to be solely in the games business, but the business is on a different trajectory now," the company said. "What was launched as the ultimate gaming machine has quickly evolved to become an all-in-one entertainment device with something for every member of the household."
The chart is faulty, for the GC it tracks six and a half years (78 months), this is longer, then the device was on the market, the Gamecube was launched September 2001 and discontinued February 2007 (65 months). The same goes for the XBox, which had a life on 54 months in reality and 66 months in this chart.
It's noticable, that none of the curves start at the left side of the chart, but the x-axis is clearly labeled year 1...year 2, so each of the marks on this axis has to indicate a single year.
Production was discontinued at those times. That does not preclude that the remaining units shipped to stores wouldn't continue to sell for months afterward, especially as sales momentum slowed.
Unlikely a year after the discontinuation of the GC no store had it on sale, at least not here in germany, the same goes for the XBox, this machine vanished from the stores so fast, that I always wondered, if MS took them back.
No I am not sure, but I am sure, that NPD didn't tracked the GC sales 78 months after launch of the console, the same goes for XBox sales 66 moths after launch of the console, you can easily see this in their own market reports.
They stopped tracking the Gamecube in April 2007, 66 moths after launch, by this time sales were down to 13k, in the months January-April 2007, NPD reported GC sales of 93000 units. For the whole year 2006, NPD tracked sales of about 550000 Gamecubes in the US.
If you look at the graph, you can see, that the YEARLY sales (that is all the graph is showing) fell at this point slowly from about 1500000 to 1000000.
This clearly shows, that the chart is not corresponding with the reported NPD numbers.
It's noticable, that none of the curves start at the left side of the chart, but the x-axis is clearly labeled year 1...year 2, so each of the marks on this axis has to indicate a single year.
They stopped tracking the Gamecube in April 2007, 66 moths after launch, by this time sales were down to 13k, in the months January-April 2007, NPD reported GC sales of 93000 units. For the whole year 2006, NPD tracked sales of about 550000 Gamecubes in the US.
If you look at the graph, you can see, that the YEARLY sales (that is all the graph is showing) fell at this point slowly from about 1500000 to 1000000.
This clearly shows, that the chart is not corresponding with the reported NPD numbers.