Digital Home Thoughts: Official 360 Numbers Bad and Good

"Some Xbox news came out in today’s earnings announcement from Microsoft. Here’s the stuff you care about: About 1.5 million Xbox 360s were sold from Nov. 22 to Dec. 21, with 900,000 consoles in North America, 500,000 in Europe and 100,000 in Japan. Wow, that’s shockingly bad, especially in Japan. Msoft puts the blame squarely on the shoulders of shortages. Maybe this is why no one likes to do “global launches.” On the plus side for Msoft, the attach rate was amazingly high. In other words, people bought lots of games for their 360s. The rate was more than four per console and accessories were more than three per console. And we know that’s where the real money is. Since the launch of the Xbox 360, people have downloaded 4 million things from Live. Many of those things likely cost money, though there’s tons of free stuff on Live as well."



While the official numbers for Microsoft's global Xbox 360 launch underwhelmed analysts and investors, I think it was a complete success. All of the hype about shortages continues to generate press for the 360, and there's no such thing as bad press. On top of that Microsoft beat Sony and Nintendo to market by more than a year (if rumors of a Winter '06 PS3 launch are to be believed). Given the high attach rate for games and accessories, I think Microsoft can capitalize on that first to market advantage in the long run, with an expected customer base of over 5 million users before the PS3 arrives. Now Microsoft just needs to supply more content, and I don't just mean games. Hopefully part of their digital home convergence strategy includes downloadable movies and music via. the 360.