Xbox 360 Doing Better Than Expected

Despite the hardware shortages, Microsoft's next-gen system is still selling briskly.

Stock for the Xbox 360 may be light but Microsoft is still making good use of its alone time in the next generation to build a sizeable installed base. Despite the overpublicized hardware shortages, Microsoft could sell more Xbox 360s than even it expected by the start of summer.

By the end of June Microsoft should sell 6 million Xbox 360s, says American Technology Research analyst P.J. McNealy, as reported by Next Generation. This is about 30 per cent better than Microsoft's predictions of 4.5-5 million sold by the end of June. McNealy is also reported to have said there will be 10 million Xbox 360s sold by the end of the year.

McNealy polled 125 retailers and found only a fifth of them had stock. When Kikizo took to the streets of London for an informal poll, we found that stores are getting stock more often and some even have boxes sitting on shelves.

Most of the stores polled by Kikizo also said that they had at last taken care of all pre-orders, which they've been trying to fill since the console's launch in December.

Microsoft is hoping to build as much of a barrier of installed bases before the PlayStation 3 arrives. That task is being made slightly easier by Sony's murkiness on all things next-gen right now, though there are promises that the company will make more detailed launch announcements in the near future.

Alex Wollenschlaeger
Editor, Kikizo Games