Xbox 360’s Headstart + Peter Moore talks about Live/E3.
Microsoft had previously expressed a goal to ship 4.5 to 5.5 million Xbox 360’s by the end of their financial year, June 30. However during a conference call after the third quarter results were announced, this was increased to between 5 to 5.5 million units shipped - a small increase to a minimum of 5 million.
Microsoft further said that its earlier manufacturing problems were over, with VP Peter Moore saying, “Our supply challenges are behind us operationally”. This has allowed them to ship 3.2 million Xbox 360s so far, including 1.8 million in North America alone. They also announced that over 4 million Xbox Live Arcade games had been downloaded from the Xbox Live Marketplace.
Looks like it’s going to very possible for Microsoft to hit the 10 million mark before PS3 will even hit 2 million (probably sometime around December 06-January 07). Historically, the system that hits 10 million first has always come out on top sales wise.
As I talked about earlier, Microsoft is really stepping up the Live service during the E3 week. Not only will the entire week allow Silver members to have access like a Gold member, but they will also be throwing up high definition videos right from the floor of E3, and also demos of some games. Peter Moore talked about the these issues, and the fact that some people worry about the “strain” on the Xbox Live servers.
Microsoft VP Peter Moore recently had an interview posted on Xbox.com where he said,
“It is our goal to bring E3 home to Xbox Live members as best we can, all the videos and the news as quickly as possible. We will give you the flavor of what’s going on, on the show floor and some of the stuff that we are showing and debuting here.”
The strain on the Live servers will also be increased by the recent announcement of another Verizon sponsored free Xbox Live Gold week, so in addition to having thousands or millions of people downloading E3 content, there will also be many new gamers playing over Live. Moore was confident though, saying,
“If we can get through Halo® 2, which we did, then I think we can get through anything.”
SEGA Driving Studio is set the revive an old classic series with their first game, as we will see a new SEGA Rally game on the Xbox 360, PS3, and PC in 2007.