Microsoft: 10m Xbox 360s sold in US, the 'first this generation' [update]

by Ross Miller on May 14th 2008 5:45PM

Microsoft has announced that Xbox 360 has become "the first current-generation gaming console" to break the 10 million threshold for units sold in the US. According to NPD Group analyst Anita Frazier (via CNET), the Wii stands at 8.8 million and the PlayStation 3 at 4.1 million units sold.

Much as we did yesterday with Nintendo's announcement of having sold 6 million Wiis in Japan, let's break this number down. Assume the Xbox 360 hit 10 million as of midnight May 14, or 903 days since its November 22, 2005 launch.

At a population of 301.4million, that's approximately 3.32% of all people in the US.
Using the 903 metric, the Xbox 360 has therefore sold 11,074 per day, 461 per hour and 7.7 units per minute.

Microsoft also announced 12 million global members of Xbox Live and 19 million Xbox 360 units sold worldwide, which they claim is "more than any other current-generation console." Update: GameDaily contacted Microsoft to remind them that the Wii is currently sitting at 25 million worldwide, to which they said, "we apologize for any confusion. Xbox 360 has the largest global install base of any current gen, high definition gaming console" (emphasis added).

Source

Tags: breakingnews, business, microsoft, sales, us, xbox, xbox-360

Reader Comments (98)

Wii will pass it before the end of the summer.

Not too fair to compare a $250 purchase to a $279-$450 one in sales right?

MS does it when they bring up total sales in terms of gross amount. Our hardware got us this much money! YEA! You better believe Sony would do it too.

It's really just a matter of who wants to win and what they need to do in their stats wording to exclude the competitors that are beating them. See the update.

Omg, companies exploiting statistics in ways that makes them look better than the competition?

Anyone would think America was a capitalist society.

It's a milestone to show their staying power in the industry, which is a victory for Microsoft's overall strategy for long-term living room dominion

Swat Kats are the shit!

and i scoff at your idea of Microsoft's plan for living room domination. they are thinking much bigger than that, they are shooting for.....(cue dramatic music).....WORLD DOMINATION!!11!!1!1!!

think about it, what tech market doesnt Microsoft have their hands in? just about every gadget i have (minus my video games) has something to do with Microsoft (either made by them or competing with them).

So I guess eventually, the Zune will be a success like the 360? Not being sarcastic here, Microsoft has done very well with the Xbox brand and I really like it right next to Playstation.

They spent a lot of money, spent lots of blood, sweat and tears to break into the videogame market and have a solid foothold. Wonder if they'll do the same with the Zune? My brother certainly enjoys his.

i cant get down with the 360 but i certainly love my Zune80. i hope they put as much effort into that as they have put into the 360, cause they certainly have bogarted themselves to the top of the gaming industry in only about 6 and 1/2 years.

I'm just gonna wait and watch the flame grow

Here are some references that you guys can use: RROD,360 vs PS3, Exclusives etc...

dude those are the only references anyone EVER uses. you dont have to remind anybody about that, they are quite familiar lol.

It seems that microsoft's decision to launch early has paid off so far. Now they'll be a year ahead on the 720 so that'll propel there numbers too. Please don't attack me but I own all three consoles (wii, ps3, 360) and I have to say that the 360 is the best for my preference of gaming. I am really surprised that the Wii has taken off like it has, and the PS3 still doesn't have any titles that interest me, infact I sold all of my PS3 games so it only does bluray. Though I will be pickin up MGS4 and GT5 but still I feel that the 360 has better and more exclusives for my gaming style

They finally made it into the black w/ Halo 3, but I'm not sure if they think it was worth it to release a flawed piece of hardware that cost them a billion dollars.

I don't think MS will be first, and if they are, the impact won't be as big (imo) because some will wake up and say "Hey look, this happened before and look at how awfully unreliable the hardware was" or "Why do I have to spend $300-$400 again when the PS3 and Wii are still there (pardoning any unforeseen circumstances)?"

In fact, it wouldn't surprise me to see SONY pull a MS and release early, while still simultaneously supporting the PS3 and PS4 like they are/were doing with PS2/PS3. Besides, the R&D won't be as much if they use a beefed up Cell combo. Blu-ray is here to stay in the gaming industry, they have a proven system, and they will learn from the mistake of trying to go with something complicated (resorting back to Cell will help immensely, same architecture)

The Sound:

Yea it will definitely help if they keep the same architecture, but development for the Cell is what was the problem in the first place. I sincerely hope they release really good tools for development and improve upon whats already available. Tools are everything - thats one of the reasons devs love MS.

"Blu-ray is here to stay in the gaming industry, they have a proven system"

This is just laughable. The gaming industry is using DVDs (i.e. PS2, XBOX, XBOX360, Wii) Only the PS3 is using BD, and no, it is not a proven system when GTAIV on Xbox360 is actually running in a higher res than the one on PS3, and countless other titles running the same if not better on DVD (DMC4, etc.). It still remains to be seen if HD movie discs will actually replace DVDs in the future (and no, beating HD-DVD does not suddenly make Blu-ray more attractive to customers who don't care about HD, which are many). In other words, Blu-ray has yet to prove itself as a necessary medium for either video games OR movies.

I don't think disk capacity has anything to do with the higher resolution of the 360, so relating the two makes no sense. It might for games that use heavy amounts of sprites, but I doubt the texture resolutions differ between the two games.

I think most next gen consoles will have a higher capacity disk drive in them - they'll be cheaper by then anyway. It really depends if Sony's nice with the licenses.

well games wont be able to be on DVD's forever. just about every generation has needed a bump in space. now DVD is fine right now, but in 2-3 years, who knows? there have been very few devs that have had a problem with the amount of space allotted to them on DVD but Blu-ray wipes that worry away completely. plus by next gen, they should have a disc/reader out that reads more similar to a DVD, thus allowing for better seek times and such. you can never go wrong with extra space and 50GB > 9GB.

Ok I've been wondering, and this is a serious question question here as I'm looking to learn the answer, but why do people care so much about sales in Japan when the market is so tiny?

I mean, when we get sales figures for the month in the US and one console outsells another by a couple thousand consoles (like 262,000 to 257,000 or whatever it was in March) people write it off as basically being a tie. It's close enough that the difference is negligible, no big deal.

But when something outsells something else by 5,000 in Japan it's "OMG IT GOT BLASTED, LAMBASTED, ANNHILATED WHY DO THEY EVEN BOTHER MAKING THAT CONSOLE ANYMORE LOLZ!!"

Is it just me, or isn't 5,000 consoles 5,000 consoles. If one console outsells another by 1.025 percent which equals 5,000 consoles in America, and then gets outsold by 10,000 percent which equals that same 5,000 consoles in Japan, isn't that still the same number of consoles in total?

And in reality, the US numbers usually aren't as close as those 262k vs. 257k numbers were that month, usually the difference alone between the two is larger than the total number either console sold in Japan anyway even if they other console had sold zero in Japan.

I'm just trying to figure this out...

Mostly because the greatest legacy series of the industry are still Japanese. Granted, a good chunk of those great legacy series belong to Nintendo, so the point is moot, but you still need the support of excellent development houses like Capcom, Konami, Square-Enix, and BanDai Namco, and to get the support of the Japanese giants, its best to get support of the Japanese consumer

It seems really only Microsoft cares about its 360 sales in Japan. MS, forget that region, your doing so well everywhere else, why is Japan so important.

You throw around money to secure Japanese exclusives, but it doesn't do a damn thing. For one thing, Tales of Vesperia doesn't belong on 360, please bring it to PS3, you know it'll get many more sales and recognition there. Many more Japanese have a PS3 than 360 and in the U.S, there's many PS3 owners desperate for good RPGs, whereas 360 owners are happy with their Western games.

I'd like to have Japanese games on my PS3 and Western games on my 360 personally.

Does this 10 million include replacement consoles for people sending in RRoD systems? Because I hardly think 3% of the US own a 360. Especially when I myself am on my 4th 360.

i think it is consoles sold...so probably not..

I know a handful of people that have bought more than one xbox however.

I meant to second Spek, not Mofo. In my opinion, the US market will one day be far more important than the Jap market, if not so already. It's more important that MS establish a strong base in the US first. Everyone else will come around eventually :)

It already is.

Console gaming is a dying breed in Japan, and games that normally do well in Japan do much better in Europe and the States.

The fact is, the Japanese gaming market isn't what it used to be anymore.

Congrats on the 10 Million sold here in the good ol U.S. of A. But don't forget you're console started the race a year before the rest so don't get cocky!

wonder how many of those sales are people re buying a 360 because theirs RROD.

Seeing as there's a 3-year warranty and the 360 has been out for 2-and-a-half years, probably none.

We have 3 year warranty dummy. Why would anyone have to rebuy a console jackass?

The warranty ONLY covers the RROD issue and not other console failures like Disc read errors & disc scratching among others. If you have an issue other than the RROD it will cost you $100.00 for a fix or refurbished console.

I think some people would just buy another console instead of paying $100.00 for a refurb that will just break again. You would only need to buy an Arcade version in that case and the cost of a new machine with upgraded hardware might be better than $100.00 for a refurbished one.

In fact my brother did that same exact thing. He purchased a new more dependable Arcade version instead of paying $100.00 to get his console fixed. I am trying to convince him to let me go ahead and RROD it on purpose so he can get it fixed for free. Pretty sad commentary on the stability of the hardware. I have had 6 of them RROD on me 4 natural 2 artificial with towels. They were disc read errors which is a known hardware defect directly related to overheating.

I believe Aaron's question referred specifically to RROD.

If we're going to get into disc-read errors, I think the 360 comes remotely close to the extent of the PS2's issues.

@Benny

But we are not talking about the PS2 we are talking about the 360. Its not relevant to the conversation at hand. Its a nice attempt at spin and it is in fact true but completely irrelevant in this conversation.

Likewise the original X-Box had many problems with disc read errors. Also, the PS2 got so cheap near the end of its popularity and there was not as big of an internet frenzy over these issues at that time that it fell upon deaf ears. Besides, I never heard of a PS2 that dies within a couple of hours of playtime.

@ McPoop

J.H.C. McPoop. You actually have the balls to accuse somebody at spin when your own spin cycle is set to "sony"?

And likewise yours is set to Microsoft ...

No matter how impartial people try to sound there is always a bias built in ... We all have favorites ... Tell me what I said that was incorrect instead of just throwing out generalizations ... I have never denied that I prefer the Playstation 3 console ... it doesn't mean my opinion is invalid ... And it was spinning the facts and the conversation at hand ... Sorry to break it to you

I own all of them and made my opinion from experience unlike some of the people on this site who just throw out insults without experiencing all three consoles ...

McPoop...

That's all I wanted was confirmation from you that your walls of text lately are nothing other then biased opinions & advertisements for Sony.

I don't have an issue with that, only the turd stains from the SDF who state their biased opinions as fact.

considering that there are a little over 100 mln households in the US means that there is an exbox in about every 10th household.

At about 3 people per household, about 10% of US population have access to one. That is decent.

So,everybody lies i guess.
That consoles/next gen consoles/next gen high def consoles/whatever the fuck i want it to be was just sad ,common the numbers are great no need to manipulate the truth to make it just even better like that,it just ends silly.
MS is good doing that.

Anyway,Grats at Xbox division for proving the PS franchise COULD be pwnd,and that online is important for the future of console gaming.

hahaha I actually laughed at that one.

They seem to be getting pretty cocky and arogant now. Its unsettling. Congrats to them though, the wii will pass them soon, the ps3 won't in america, europe is a whole different ball game though.

I'd be really surprised if the PS3 would make it to the 10 mil mark in a year from now, but hey, that's just me.

And you wonder why women want to get rid of you?

The 360 is bar none the fastest selling electronic device in history*.

*by electronic device, we mean fastest selling electronic device that plays videogames.**

**Well, fastest selling gaming system of the CURRENT generation.***

***Excluding the Wii, 'cause that's kinda unfair since like, there's millions of them everywhere, and how the heck do you compete with that? Like, seriously, everyone wants one for some reason. So what we're trying to say is better than that other gaming system that isn't the Wii, yet HD. yeah...

All of the companies will try to spin the numbers in their favor ... Any company in any line of business would do the same thing ... The Wii doesn't have to say anything because the numbers speak for themselves

"Xbox 360 has the largest global install base of any current gen, high definition gaming console"

lmao i couldn't stop laughing. Burn Nintendo fanboys,burn!

Wow you're really buying into that spin eh? Fact is that Wii is the highest selling console this gen. If 360 passes up Wii globally, which it wont, the lead for Wii is growing, then we'll have something to talk about.

Who the fuck keeps buying PS2s?
*wimpering in a corner*
I can't relate.

Maybe if Sony dropped support for the PS2 like Microsoft did to the X box they would have moved more consoles ...

i wonder the same thing cause the PS2 is cutting into the PS3's sales. i mean Microsoft not only got a year head start, but left it as the only Xbox option out there. PS3 would be alot better off with a BC sub $300 SKU and no PS2.

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Microsoft: 10m Xbox 360s sold in US, the 'first this generation' [update]

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