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MS CFO: Manufacture of Xbox Consoles may slow down or stop...

We're going round in circles. I accept that point, she didn't technically say that. But the logical outcome is either they have to slow/pause manufacture, or pile them up in Indiana Jones' warehouse. So it isn't unreasonable to infer that from her comments, even if she didn't specifically say it herself
I was largely responding to the back and forth between plagiarize and Miles where the former wrote:
CFO: "Xbox Console manufacturing to drawdown." Could mean slowing down or temporary halting of production.

There's a distinction between what was said about channel inventory and what is being inferred and it seems a reasonably significant distinction. Further, her comments can be taken as talking about normal seasonal reduction in shipments in line with reasonable expectation and accounted for in manufacturing scheduling, or whether this is some terrible unforeseen change, or somewhere in between. The latter of which seems to be the prevailing runaway narrative now. Despite the wider context of her comments suggesting more towards the former. And if the former, the dichotomy you present between unforeseen reactionary slowdown and building a skyscraper out of unsold inventory, becomes somewhat false.

This doesn't mean everything is hunky dory, there are certainly issues facing the XBO. It also doesn't have any bearing whatsoever on the PS4's phenomenal performance etc. etc. It's just a matter of whether her words and the situation in play are being accurately recognised. The XBO isn't a Wii U in the making.
 
For everyone saying this is no big deal, you gravely do not understand modern manufacturing. Before I begin, I'm just talking about manufacturing realities, the console is probably going to be fine. I work in IT for a place that does manufacturing internal and external so I have some perspective on this.

Manufacturing plants aren't just some willy wonka magic fantasy place. Production lines have to be specced, assembled, staffed, and set in motion for a predetermined speed for a predetermined about of time. There isn't a speed adjustment. If you want to produce less of something, its a costly retooling of the entire line.

This isn't entirely true.

I actually worked on the factory floor in a electronics manufacturing/assembly plant (for Motorola, on a contract to produce a product for a third-party contract) for a couple years, so I too have experience in this area.

While you are correct that lines are engineered to run at a certain speed, you are being entirely disingenuous to say you can't slow them down.

You absolutely can. You simply cut a shift.

At Motorola, a 24/7 line ran 3 shifts, 24/7. If they wanted to slow this down, weekend production was cut. If they wanted to slow it down further, they'd cut one of the shifts. If they wanted to slow it down even further, they'd cut a second shift.

The line personnel either move to fill a shift on another line or are cut, which probably isn't that big a deal at one of those huge places like Pegatron or Foxxcon that always has more projects. It wasn't even that big a deal at Motorolla when I worked there because most of the people most vulnerable to this kind of shift were hired through a temp agency and were not actual Motorolla employees to begin with.

The assembler basically leases the floor space for the line and that fee is the same whether the line is running 24/7 or not. The assembler has to get that money, because that's floor space and equipment that could be used on another assembly contract. But cutting shifts means the labor cost is cut, and excess warehoused inventories are reduced, while maintaining a line that you can get back up and running to full production whenever the need arises. It's not maximum efficiency, but it's not uncommon in the industry.
 
So it boils down to that the 360/PS3-generation lasted too long and Sony/Microsoft guessed that there'd be a demand for about 10-15 million units in 2013/14. They both began production with about a million units per month. Sony open in a lot of markets in the first year. Microsoft, by contrast, open in a select few in order to try to secure US/UK markets early.

Good press happens, bad press happens and the consoles are off to a good start. Sony sells through their entire stock until april and we're finally beginning to see stock in stores in some countries. Microsoft has a strong brand loyality and manages to sell really good in the first couple of months. Of course Microsoft realises that the huge initial sales will never be able to be sustained, and they realised this before launch, and spent a lot of dough positioning Titanfall at the forefront of media attention.

Now when Titanfall has come and gone and still didn't secure the NPD of March Microsoft has realised that it wasn't the second coming. And that you can't sell a console on just one game. Now they have to face that they have 2 million unsold units sitting in warehouses and that they'll have 3 million more before they launch in new territories. They still have about a million unsold at retailers. Interestingly enough is that most EU-territories where it hasn't launched yet have units readily available at almost every retailer.

Things aren't looking good. Third console curse.

To be fair, both Sony and Microsoft were completely right about there being demand for 10-15 million new consoles, as we can see if we combine their sales. The problem MS has is that it was not an even 50:50 split, but a split very much in favor of Sony even in their most dominant region. This expectation of a 50:50 split is probably also why Sony has been having supply issues, though that is not a bad problem for Sony to have, especially when people are just waiting for the PS4 to be in stock rather than pick up an XB1. In fact, it was very smart for MS to focus on North America as that was the most dominant for MS by far and with it, the 360 was able to basically tie with the PS3. MS's biggest problems were designing the XB1 around Kinect and attempting to bring out a online-only console with no used games, and it may be the latter that ultimately caused the XB1's lesser sales compared to the PS4, as much like casual people gained the initial perception of the Wii U being an add-on to the Wii and having not learned otherwise, casual people will continue to think XB1 requires online and doesn't allow used games and not learn otherwise. It also does not help that the biggest, most hyped XB1 game is online-only and that XB1 needs to download an update to play games.
 
This isn't entirely true.

I actually worked on the factory floor in a electronics manufacturing/assembly plant (for Motorola, on a contract to produce a product for a third-party contract) for a couple years, so I too have experience in this area.

While you are correct that lines are engineered to run at a certain speed, you are being entirely disingenuous to say you can't slow them down.

You absolutely can. You simply cut a shift.

At Motorola, a 24/7 line ran 3 shifts, 24/7. If they wanted to slow this down, weekend production was cut. If they wanted to slow it down further, they'd cut one of the shifts. If they wanted to slow it down even further, they'd cut a second shift.

The line personnel either move to fill a shift on another line or are cut, which probably isn't that big a deal at one of those huge places like Pegatron or Foxxcon that always has more projects. It wasn't even that big a deal at Motorolla when I worked there because most of the people most vulnerable to this kind of shift were hired through a temp agency and were not actual Motorolla employees to begin with.

The assembler basically leases the floor space for the line and that fee is the same whether the line is running 24/7 or not. The assembler has to get that money, because that's floor space and equipment that could be used on another assembly contract. But cutting shifts means the labor cost is cut, and excess warehoused inventories are reduced, while maintaining a line that you can get back up and running to full production whenever the need arises. It's not maximum efficiency, but it's not uncommon in the industry.

Good points, but also remember that when you cut shifts you tend to increase your turnover rate, which can often decrease output and reliability. It is a much more complex problem. I think Microsoft was expecting swift sales, but are now getting a tough lesson in logistics.
 
I don't know what's going on here, but this might help

ruler_metal.png

What's that? Looks like a ruler, but there are more than 12 numbers on that thing. Anyway, I was on my phone, but should have type MM as in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MM Numbers and measures: Million in some financial contexts.
 
If they wanted to slow this down, weekend production was cut. If they wanted to slow it down further, they'd cut one of the shifts. If they wanted to slow it down even further, they'd cut a second shift.

The line personnel either move to fill a shift on another line or are cut, which probably isn't that big a deal at one of those huge places like Pegatron or Foxxcon that always has more projects. It wasn't even that big a deal at Motorolla when I worked there because most of the people most vulnerable to this kind of shift were hired through a temp agency and were not actual Motorolla employees to begin with.

The assembler basically leases the floor space for the line and that fee is the same whether the line is running 24/7 or not. The assembler has to get that money, because that's floor space and equipment that could be used on another assembly contract. But cutting shifts means the labor cost is cut, and excess warehoused inventories are reduced, while maintaining a line that you can get back up and running to full production whenever the need arises. It's not maximum efficiency, but it's not uncommon in the industry.
Not using a line at full specced capacity is an opportunity cost somebody has to eat, and it's not going to be the factory. Slowing down in the way you describe effectively drives up the per-unit production cost of whatever you're still making (or not making!).
 
No, the Xbox 360 was severely supply constrained during the same time period and shipped more as well. Everybody knows the PS4 numbers....

:rolleyes: it was supply constrained but sold a fraction of what the Xbox One sold during the same time.
 
:rolleyes: it was supply constrained but sold a fraction of what the Xbox One sold during the same time.

And? It's selling less then 360 now...apples and oranges comparison. 360 would have sold a lot more had their been stock, same as ps2, ps3, etc.... Different world now.
 
Xbox is just a small portion of Microsoft revenues. The lion's share comes from sales to commercial enterprises. The new CEO can choose to exit the console business and I wouldn't be the least bit surprised.
 
Xbox is just a small portion of Microsoft revenues. The lion's share comes from sales to commercial enterprises. The new CEO can choose to exit the console business and I wouldn't be the least bit surprised.

I really wouldn't be surprised either. Nadella has a lot of cover to cancel the program: it's unpopular among investors, it must be missing internal goals, and it's a legacy of Ballmer's ...questionable... pursuit into consumer products. Hypothetically, he could discontinue the console and move gaming assets to align more with the rest of Microsoft: into PC and mobile.

This thread isn't really about that, but I'd say there's a 50/50 chance Microsoft will still be in the console business in 3 years.
 
What's that? Looks like a ruler, but there are more than 12 numbers on that thing. Anyway, I was on my phone, but should have type MM as in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MM Numbers and measures: Million in some financial contexts.

Well, you see, PrivateWHudson, there's a whole wide world out there other than 'MURIKA where they use a different system of measurement than we do, one that's based on science and the foundations of our planet rather than tradition and imperialism.
 
Good points, but also remember that when you cut shifts you tend to increase your turnover rate, which can often decrease output and reliability. It is a much more complex problem. I think Microsoft was expecting swift sales, but are now getting a tough lesson in logistics.

I think you vastly over-estimate the skill required for about 90% of the jobs on an electronics assembly line. I would imagine at a company like Pegatron or Foxxconn, they have pretty good metrics on who they keep and who they cut in situations like this.

Not using a line at full specced capacity is an opportunity cost somebody has to eat, and it's not going to be the factory.

Yeah. I already explained how that works.

Slowing down in the way you describe effectively drives up the per-unit production cost of whatever you're still making (or not making!).

So does transporting and warehousing all that excess inventory.

There's no free ride. The question is, what costs less? Eating the costs built into the contract to have a line sitting at Pegatron of Foxxconn not producing at full capacity? Or spending money on all the labor, equipment "clock time," energy cost, component costs, ect. of running 24/7 for a product that stacking up and is costing you even more money in transportation and warehousing costs?

EDIT: And don't forget the tax burden excess inventory creates. That is just a huge pit you throw money into.
 
So does transporting and warehousing all that excess inventory.

There's no free ride. The question is, what costs less? Eating the costs built into the contract to have a line sitting at Pegatron of Foxxconn not producing at full capacity? Or spending money on all the labor, equipment "clock time," energy cost, component costs, ect. of running 24/7 for a product that stacking up and is costing you even more money in transportation and warehousing costs?

EDIT: And don't forget the tax burden excess inventory creates. That is just a huge pit you throw money into.
Of course it's
c)accurately predicting the future and adjusting production capacity to match with demand at least half a year in advance, plus a little extra to buffer for holiday spikes

Which is impossible to achieve consistently, of course.

e: and with "adjusting capacity" I mean actually dropping / reestablishing entire lines, not just operate them at variable load.
 
What are you talking about? A clear market leader =/= monopoly.

Go look at the PS1, PS2, DS, 3DS, Amazon, and Steam. All of them are market leaders by a wide margin because consumers voted with their wallets. It's up to the companies to improve their value proposal if they need to keep up. That's REAL competition and that's how WE benefit from competition the most.

I agree. Every product that companies make isn't not going to be successful every single time. Everyone falls once in a while.

Hoping that Xbox One reaches sales parity "for the sake of competition" isn't the way that competition works. You create a bad product along with bad advertising, no one will buy it, nor will people all of a sudden buy a failing product because, "So-&-so is running away big with sales, etc."

TBone will also be the exclusive 'Box that drives the next generation of Oculus Rift, a native 4K Ultra HD OLED VR with greatly reduced latency, larger FOV and none of the flaws that still exist in Crystal Cove. -FAR superior to Project Morpheus or any improvements Sony can implement.

This will start to become a reality once
Satya Nadella approves a complete buyout of Facebook
and all things TBone are under the personal supervision of Xbox Boss Phil Spencer.

Sony may continue to lead XBone for the next few years with PS4, but come fall 2018, Sony better be ready for a REAL all-out Ultra HD console VR war where Microsoft fights hard with everything that its many multi-billions can simply moneyhat. From chipset and VR tech, to 1st party studios to 3rd party exclusives, that stay, exclusive.


Greatness Awaits ??

Why not just Embrace Perfection (TM).


Bwuhahahaha

Sorry, but that's not gonna happen.
 
The thing is... bad gossip travels faster than good gossip, so when word got out that the XBO was gonna be always online, no game borrowing, no used game selling, and all of that, people spread the word around like crazy. Then MS did all the 180's... and the same people who spread the word about their original plans failed to spread the "good" news about them eliminating those plans because... good gossip isn't fun, I know that is not the sole reason why it's not selling as well as it could, but it surely plays a part.
 
You're on fire in this thread :)

Let me try to use your alien technology. *Warning* Napkin math incoming:

Xbox One box: 37cmX32cmX19cm = 22,496 cubic cm
~0.0225 cubic m
x 6 million units
~135 thousand cubic m

UPS pallet specs: 305cmX213cmX193cm = 12,538,245 cubic cm (12.5 cubic meters) and take up 64965 square cm's or 6.5 square meters of floor space.

135,000/12.5 = 10800 pallets
10800 pallets X 6.5 square meters of floor space = 70,200 square meters

This article has China warehouse space at $5.32/month/square meter: http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10000872396390443931404577549122120755142

So that's $373,464/month for storage if they single stack, $186,732 if double stacked.
 
The thing is... bad gossip travels faster than good gossip, so when word got out that the XBO was gonna be always online, no game borrowing, no used game selling, and all of that, people spread the word around like crazy. Then MS did all the 180's... and the same people who spread the word about their original plans failed to spread the "good" news about them eliminating those plans because... good gossip isn't fun, I know that is not the sole reason why it's not selling as well as it could, but it surely plays a part.

I will always be grateful that social media did everything they could to make people aware of the XB1's BS DRM. Especially since all the major American game sites seemed to be going out of their way to either downplay it or ever worse, tell us it wasn't that bad and throw the word "entitlement" around.
 
I will always be grateful that social media did everything they could to make people aware of the XB1's BS DRM. Especially since all the major American game sites seemed to be going out of their way to either downplay it or ever worse, tell us it wasn't that bad and throw the word "entitlement" around.

I agree. If not for Social Media & non-gaming sites like TIME & MSNBC posting this news, MS would've probably gotten away with it.
 
The problem with the posts in this thread? People have absolutely zero idea how many Xbox Ones Microsoft has already made, and why depending on that number, it might make total sense to slow down on making more until you sell through more of the excess inventory already available to the public.

This thing called running a business, how does it work? :)
 
Here's a pretty good article discussing another important reason why excess inventory is bad:

http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2012/03/23/apple-lesson-of-the-day-inventory-is-evil.aspx

Inventory is evil.

Not just evil, but "fundamentally evil."

There's good reason that Tim Cook is now Apple's CEO, after earning his stripes as Cupertino's COO for many years. Despite the fact that he's not a "product guy" like Steve Jobs was, much of Apple's operational prowess and unparalleled supply chain is directly attributable to Cook.

Cook started at Apple shortly after Jobs' return as the last millennium was winding down. Prior to his arrival, Apple's manufacturing, distribution, and supply operations were a jumbled mess. It was his call to withdraw from manufacturing in favor of using contract manufacturers, as well as to close down warehouses all over the world.

Importantly, this was around the time that Dell (Nasdaq: DELL ) was making a name for itself by pioneering the build-to-order model with computer assembly, which inevitably became a model of efficiency for the whole computer industry.

Cook has always viewed inventory as "fundamentally evil." He's noted that inventory typically loses roughly 1%-2% of its value per week under normal conditions, but can depreciate faster when times are tough. He even compares it to milk that's about to go bad: "You kind of want to manage it like you're in the dairy business. If it gets past its freshness date, you have a problem."

Having inventory sitting on the books is a risk in itself, because if it's not being sold, it's bound to be written down eventually, which can be painful. Just ask Research In Motion (Nasdaq: RIMM ) how it felt when it had to eat a $485 million pre-tax non-cash charge just a few months ago related to its glut of unsold PlayBooks that were sitting around collecting dust.

Can I get your digits?
Let's take this a step further with some cold, hard numbers. There are two metrics that I'll focus on: inventory turnover and days of inventory.

Inventory turnover is typically calculated as cost of goods sold divided by average inventory, and theoretically represents how many times a company's current inventory balance could be sold and replaced during the period.

ibvAed62fxsmOA.png


In general, a higher number is better because it indicates greater efficiency with moving the company's product, which minimizes the risk that it will lose value and need to be written down. A higher figure shows that the company's inventory is being managed properly.

Days of inventory is closely related and is calculated based on inventory turnover. You get this metric by dividing the number of days in a period by the inventory turnover. It theoretically represents how long it will take to sell through the company's current inventory balance, but can also be interpreted as how much inventory a company has on hand.

ibto3fZHojCZAl.png


In general, a lower number is better here, but not too low. If a company has an inventory shortage, then it's leaving money on the table in terms of unsatisfied demand. If it's too high, that likely means the company has too much product and runs the risk of getting hit with the aforementioned writedowns and impairments.

There's lots more in the full article with charts and graphs comparing companies in computing and mobile hardware manage inventory. Pretty interesting stuff.

TL:DR: Basically, in addition to all the other obvious liabilities to having excess inventory that degrade unit profit, (additional warehousing and transportation cost, tax liabilities, ect) a huge problem is the obvious, but often overlooked, risk carried that the longer a unit resides in inventory, the more and more likely it is that that unit will lose value. The most successful electronics firms reduce this risk, the ones that fail often write down huge losses.

...

So if Microsoft isn't selling Xbones as fast as they estimated, this is a really smart move. Sure, they need to sell more, but that's not the problem of the supply chain guys. That's for marketing to worry about. Make some more games or something. The supply chain folks need to do their job to insure Microsoft and its investors aren't left holding the bag, and that's precisely what they are doing and it's absolutely correct to do so.
 
Major Nelson is currently searching for the ET cartridge burial site. Rumours that he needs a hole big enough to hide 800k unsold Xbox Obes are entirely unsubstantiated.
 
Very very interesting to read this. If they are going to slow down or "drawdown", I wonder what this implies about a price drop by Holiday. Like, wouldn't you want a little excess stock going into a price drop situation?
 
Very very interesting to read this. If they are going to slow down or "drawdown", I wonder what this implies about a price drop by Holiday. Like, wouldn't you want a little excess stock going into a price drop situation?

They have plenty of excess stock, that's the problem to begin with :p
 
The problem with the posts in this thread? People have absolutely zero idea how many Xbox Ones Microsoft has already made, and why depending on that number, it might make total sense to slow down on making more until you sell through more of the excess inventory already available to the public.

This thing called running a business, how does it work? :)

Weren't you the guy claiming "they have many more countries to release in, they'll be fine!".

I'm not sure you're too qualified to be commenting on what does and what doesn't work.
 
They have plenty of excess stock, that's the problem to begin with :p

Well yeah, obviously. I mean just extrapolating what they probably have sitting on shelves based on their shipped to retailers numbers, I doubt even if XBO starts doing January 2014 numbers consistently that it wouldn't burn through that... in the US and UK, at least. I mean of course they can start manufacturing again any time they want, but I'm just curious as to how they are strategizing right now. I very much am looking for when that first price drop might be.
 
The problem with the posts in this thread? People have absolutely zero idea how many Xbox Ones Microsoft has already made, and why depending on that number, it might make total sense to slow down on making more until you sell through more of the excess inventory already available to the public.

This thing called running a business, how does it work? :)

The problem with this post is that, the very posts you're saying are problematic, are pointing out the exact same argument -- Xbox Ones are over-supplied, thus, supply will obviously have to be shortened down the line unless they want to bite the cost.
 
Drop the price MS. get rid of kinect. Drop the Price etc....

I used to be of the opinion of drop the Kinect but after owning one I do think they'd be better off keeping the Kinect in & building a reason to use the thing, and whilst they're in contact to make the mamas is going to loose money either way so yeah drop the price and give the consumer a valid reason to want to use it other than fucking skype ie; compelling games.

What Kinect does it does well, pretty cool having to never type in a code again lol and skype in your living room is cool also but I have an iPad for that.

If I was Phil Spencer the 1st I'd have done would of been to get all the 1st & 2nd party studio's together and try and come up with a decent game and re-task one of them to develop it.

I just can't see why no one at MS is addressing the fact that the bulk of what they banked on isn't compelling enough to market, yet we've already seen Sony announce phase 2 of their master plan and whilst some may not like/want/agree with Morpheus it's encouraging to see Sony looking towards the long game, whilst MS are continually looking like a false start.

I just hope E3 brings that reason to want an Xbox again.
 
Weren't you the guy claiming "they have many more countries to release in, they'll be fine!".

I'm not sure you're too qualified to be commenting on what does and what doesn't work.

Common sense dictates they have enough available units already made for those other markets they've already announced they'll be shipping to this year. Do you think Microsoft announced they're shipping to all these extra markets this year, but have exactly zero units with which to launch in those areas? Just use your head and think about that for a moment.

And, yes, considering the Xbox One is easily outselling the very successful Xbox 360, they are doing pretty well. We have the numbers (even though people are still somehow spinning them to mean xbox one is doing worse than the 360 lol). Know what numbers we don't have? How many Xbox Ones have actually been manufactured to date.
 
Know what numbers we don't have? How many Xbox Ones have actually been manufactured to date.

Know what else we don't have? How many Xbox Ones have actually been sold to customers...

Lets make one thing very clear...the Xbone is OUTSHIPPING the Xbox 360...that is the only thing you can say with certainty...
 
Common sense dictates they have enough available units already made for those other markets they've already announced they'll be shipping to this year. Do you think Microsoft announced they're shipping to all these extra markets this year, but have exactly zero units with which to launch in those areas? Just use your head and think about that for a moment.

And, yes, considering the Xbox One is easily outselling the very successful Xbox 360, they are doing pretty well. We have the numbers (even though people are still somehow spinning them to mean xbox one is doing worse than the 360 lol). Know what numbers we don't have? How many Xbox Ones have actually been manufactured to date.

LMAO<, it is not easily outselling the 360, 1.7 - 1.2 this quarter, 360 supply was constrained. It is only a matter of time before x1 falls behind 360. Supply is the only reason x1 jumped ahead, that's changing.

Again, how is 1.7 - 1.2 spinning? 360 WAS supply constrained fact, you are the one spinning.
 
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