600,000 Xbox 360 units sold in U.S.

Microsoft confirms its target of selling between 4.5 million and 5 million consoles by June of this year.

The story "600,000 Xbox 360 units sold in U.S." published January 13, 2006 at 5:53 AM is no longer available on CNET News.

Content from Reuters expires after 30 days.

[dyler]

How are they going to reach that when noone can buy one?

How is Microsoft going to reach their goal of 4.5 million if nobody can even go to a store and buy one of the consoles. It has been two months since the release and there are none available.

[BeamerMT]

What about the Defects?

Not only cant you find a unit, but the ones that are bought are told to be defective, having problems with overheating, scratching disks, and frequent crashes.

[evil_dracula]

The Same Way Sony Did when no one could buy a PS2

Sony was only able to ship around 500K units for its US launch
(In late October of 2000) It was further riddled with supply
shortages well into the new year (though they attemped to do
weekly shipments just like microsoft did).

In the first holiday season PS2 was outsold by the Dreamcast,
Nintendo 64 and even the PSOne. Articles were written
complaining about the lack of a 'killer app' and the fact that the
PS2 wasn't really living up to the promise of next generation.

The launch line-up was mediocre with the best 'next gen' titles
being SSX, Smuggler's Run and Unreal. There were also tons of
complaints about the PS2 not reading discs correctly and region
encoding problems led to a 1.25 million disc recall in Japan.

So in summary - the same availability problems, product issues,
production snags and lackluster first year results plagued the
PS2 and it went on to sell 100 Million units world wide. It was -
and still is - a great product and so is the 360.

[Batotahell]

XBox 360 Availability

I walked into EB Games in Houston the other day and there is a stack of XBox 360s (Core System) for $299 each. Plenty to be had, nobody was buying into the hype.

[zaznet]

Never sold out...

Ebay has maintained thousands of units for sale. The "sold out" idea just isn't true, never has been and never will be. It is a lot of hype to get people to scramble, panic and pay too much.

While most retailers were sold out, you still had tens of thousands of units (a nice percentage of total units sold to date) that were in unopened boxes ready for new owners.

[mlambert890]

Complete and total lie

How sad is it that you feel the need to post lies on a forum about a videogame system? Is the axe your grinding really that important to you?

EBGames and GameStop are SOLD OUT AT RETAIL nationwide until late Feb. due to their pre-orders.

I was told this by stores in NY, NJ, Houston, Dallas, Seattle, Los Angeles and Tampa. As a result, I escalated to the corporate offices of BOTH chains. They are unable to meet the allocation of pre-orders since MS has underdelivered AND they WAY oversold preorders.

360s wont even be SEEN (much less STACKED) at these stores until March (I blame the insane overselling of pre-orders more than anything else for this).

This is a very well known situation by anyone paying attention, so your lies are pointless.

[dyler]

Thank you for backing me up

Yes, I have looked at every store every day in the San Francisco Bay Area, and noone has received any shipments then the first day they arrived on Nov 22. So do not tell me you can get one. Also I am not going to pay triple the price on e-bay that is just plain stupid, I will wait until March. I just don't think they will meet this goal if stores receive them in March and then try to sell 5 million by June, just seems unlikely to me.

[jwissing]

Not in Omaha

The Omaha area has received multiple shipments since the launch. The local Best Buy had 5 sitting on the shelf until noon last week. You also need to check if your stores took preorders because they will have first priority.

Another thing to consider is MS sends the units to companies like Best Buy, Circuit City and Gamestop for example, it is then up to that company to decide which stores across the country get systems not MS. Yes there is a shortage but yell at your local retailer.

[Earl Benser]

Expensive !!!!!!!!!!

Not just for the consumer, but for Microsoft too. Current reports
say that it has cost MS at least $4 Billion to get the Xbox into
stores, and that each sale of the Xbox costs MS another $100 or so.
So after a year's sales, MS is $4.5 Billion in the hole on 5 Million
Xbiox's - that's $900 per Xbox. And somehow MS is supposed to
recoup this $900 per unit, and then come up with a profit too, from
game royalties?

That does seem to be a stretch of credibility.

[val31]

WHAT IS SO SPECIAL ABOUT THE XBOX?

I REALLY NEVER LIKED THE XBOX IN THE FIRST PLACE SO WHEN THE XBOX 360 CAME OUT I WAS AT FIRST LIKE OH WOW I MIGHT HAVE TO CHECK IN TO THAT AND ONCE I FOUND OUT THE PRICE IT WAS LIKE NO WAY! I REALLY LIKED THE PS1 AND PS2 SO I AM JUST GOING TO WAIT UNTIL THE PS3 COMES OUT OR THE NINTENDO REVOLUTION.. I BELIEVE THAT THOSE 2 SYSTEMS WILL HAVE MORE TO OFFER THAN THE XBOX...AND ANOTHER THING WHEN THE PS2 CAME OUT YOU COULD PLAY DVDS WITHOUT HAVING TO PURCHASE ANY ADDITIONAL EQUIPMENT... I HAVE ALREADY SOLD MY XBOX AND PUT THE MONEY AWAY FOR THE PS3 OR THE NINTENDO REVOLUTION WHICH EVER COMES OUT FIRST BC I WILL BE BUYING BOTH SYSTEMS..

[Stan Johnson]

I'm a MS fan but they'll never make it...

4.5 to 5.5 million units sold by the end of June seems like pie in the sky. I don't see any way MS can hit those starry numbers especially with the competition looming large. Many people that would have purchased an XBOX 360 during the holidays are now on hold and waiting for the PS3 or the Nintendo Revolution to show their goods before they buy a consol. MS should have had more units in the retail line instead of such an early launch date. I think MS blew it bigtime....bad, bad, timing.

[bouncer6178]

r u joking?

just rumor here, but i've heard that the blue rays r costing sony 100$/console, i don't see how they'll even come close to matching the 360's price with that just for the laser, though it could b a good investment cuz blue ray dvd could end up big.