Jan 09 2006
Microsoft to Miss 90 Day Target for Xbox 360
When Microsoft launched the Xbox 360 on November 22nd, they aimed to sell 2.75 million to 3 million consoles within 90 days. Now, Microsoft is finally admitting that severe shortage problem has affected the company’s early sales goal. Microsoft is now looking at a longer term picture and focusing on their June target; Microsoft is aiming to hit sales of 4.5 million to 5.5 million consoles by the end of the company’s fiscal year this June, when they expect supply to finally equalize with demand.
According to analysts, sales through the holiday seasons were predicted to be around 1.3 million units, and the problem behind the shortage was capacity and components. According to Peter Moore, “Nothing’s perfect - you’ve got a complex piece of hardware that includes 1,700 different parts. Every now and again the line will slow down because something’s happened and there’ll be a component that didn’t make it that morning. That’s just the way of the beast, particularly when you are ramping up factories from ground zero all the way up to full capacity.”