These are ther first numbers I've seen:

http://www.mcvonline.de/?article_id=38395

It's in German and the best I can make of it with babelfish is that in its first 3 days, it sold 10K units in German major retailer outlets. Maybe someone who can actually read German can confirm that?

http://www.mcvonline.de/?article_id=38470

Same source, different article, puts UK sales for the first 3 days at 48K.

Both articles mention that the PS2 sold 70K in each country over a similar period at launch. These numbers certainly don't look too impressive and it may mean that the European launch hasn't been any better than the Japanese one.

Of course, these numbers could be just plain wrong or they don't mean what I'm assuming they mean. In any event, we should be getting more comprehensive numbers from American press soon.

48K versus 70K seems good to me. Especially at how much it costs.

Was Rallisport Challenge a launch title over there? I'm betting we'll see a jump in sales when it's released, as well as when the first big soccer (football) games come out.

Tuan Jim

Amusing little article over at teamxbox.com:

http://www.teamxbox.com/news.php?id=2767

Amusing indeed.

In any event, here's another link to an Australian site:

http://australianit.news.com.au/arti...D15321,00.html

"The Xbox launched in Australia last Thursday and independent sales data from Inform shows retailers sold 9124 Xbox consoles in the first four days.

It doesn't exactly look like XBox is conquering Oz either.

Please explain why it's amusing. I don't get your punch line.

belboz, why do you think it's not doing that great abroad? You own one right? I wonder what the deal is. It's a nice system. Must be that high price tag without the hype of PS2.

That article says the PS2 sold 50,000 in its first month. If I remember correctly, that was the month leading into Christmas.

9124 consoles in 4 days isn't half bad considering the PS2 sold 12,500 in 7 days.

Anyway, I don't think Australia is going to make or break Sony, Nintendo, or Microsoft.

The German site posted some numbers for France:

http://www.mcvonline.de/?article_id=38830

Again, from what I can make of the babelfish translation it looks like they sold 10K units to the French. That means the three biggest markets in Europe (by far) are accounted for and the total is less than 70K. These aren't exact numbers, of course, since like NPD, they are numbers based on reported sales by the major retailers in each country. I'm still a bit hesitant to put too much faith in these numbers, but all indications so far seem to point towards a lukewarm European launch.

I don't own a XBox, but I've been eyeing it since launch day. One of my friends has one, so I've been content so far to just play his. I'm sure it's just a matter of time before a game comes out that kicks me in the ass to go get one for myself.

As for XBox sales abroad, I don't think that MS is terribly disappointed with how well they've done so far. Considering what they're up against, I really wasn't expecting much more from them. They've successfully broken into the hardcore segment of each market they've entered and I think internally, that's probably all that they realistically hoped to achieve anyway.

My guess is that MS decided very early on to get to market as quickly as possible even if it meant sacrificing the immediate success and profitability of the business. For example, they could have waited one cycle and tried to launch clear of the GC, maybe even waiting until a year before the PS3. This would have given them time to do their own design and maybe establish their own manufacturing rather than contracting all of that out.

But, I think that they were basically impatient and maybe a little bit fearful that not jumping in immediately would make them too late. They saw strategically where they wanted to be, knew they had the money to get themselves there and decided to pay the extra cost of doing it sooner rather than later.

Yeah, the Aussies are a secondary market. In of themselves, they're not too important. But insofar as it's a market similar to Western Europe, I take XBox's performance there to be a rough indicator of how well it's doing in Euroland.

As for the sales numbers, you're citing the average weekly sales of the PS2 in its first 4 weeks in Australia. If the XBox continues to sell at 10K a week for the next 3 weeks, then those numbers would be comparable. Otherwise, I'm thinking the XBox average is likely to come down a bit.

The team xbox article says it was. So I guess it was, however teamxbox have made dumb errors before.

Anyone review the offical Eueo launch list?

Amusing/goofy:

Still not amusing. That's just lame.

This thread is totally xbox.