GhaleonEB said:
Here's a question for you sonycowboy -
How many units does Microsoft need to sell through in order for the early launch to be consisdered a success? I'm thinking in every territory, but especially the US where the fight should be the closest. 3m? 5m?
If MS does not install at least 3-4m units in the US (assuming they have a fully year advantage in the territory) then I'd say they blew their advanage of the early launch. I'm interested in your take.
I think they need to ship a minimum of 4.5M units in the US (2M holiday 05 and 2.5M for the first 10 months of 2006 (average of 250k/month) to really take advantage of the year head start. Anything less than that would be not taking advantage of what they have in front of them.
However, I'm of the thought that even if they managed to sell ~6M in the US in that time that it still will come down to how well they compete against Sony when they are going head-to-head. Sony will have a tough time having enough units at launch (generally true of launches) and I think Microsoft would love to do to Sony what Sony did to them in 2001. Sony essentially sold 4.5M units from September 2001->February 2002 and I think Microsoft will need to have comparable numbers (say 3M at least) to feel comfortable.
The initial 1st year is incredibly important and I think Microsoft will do absolutely everything they can to ship as many units as humanly possible before the PS3 ships. However, I think that holiday 2006 is even more critically important for Microsoft and slightly less so for Sony. Sony should sell every single unit they can produce, so they're already constrained. Microsoft needs to make holiday 2006 their beachhead and have a software lineup that will boggle your mind. IMO, it's way more important to have a strong 2006 lineup that launch lineup for Xbox360.
All this being said, there are simply so many variables, that putting numbers is probably a bad way to do it. It's more how the systems compete against each other. With like 8 systems out in holiday 2006 potentially, the numbers may not break out how many might expect them to do.