Some good news for MS
 

For those who believe that we only harp on negative news:

There was a huge surge in XBox sales in Australia once the price cut went into effect.

"John Redenbach, Toys R Us merchandise director, said sales of Xbox on Friday and Saturday were 2.5 times the entire launch week...

...other retailers describe a similar boost in sales."

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

Hopefully for MS, the European market has responded similarly to the price cuts there.

Also, nVidia recently filed an 8-K report with the SEC (basically an official report of current news that materially affects investors) in regards to MS having taken their dispute over the XBox contract into arbitration. Essentially, MS is trying to force a cut in their cost for the nVidia supplied parts in the XBox. If they're successful, it would go a long way towards cutting their production cost for the XBox.

As for Sony, they reported FY01 earnings last Thursday. They announced sales of 18M PS2s in FY01 which together with the 10M units sold in FY00 brings the worldwide installed base for PS2's to 28M. They projected sales of 20M units for FY02, which if accurate would bring the total to 48M by this time next year.

This compares to MS which is projecting 3.5M to 4M XBoxes by the end of this June and 9M to 11M by the end of June, 2003. Nintendo recently announced that they were hoping to hit 12M by the end of this year, but that was from an IGN article that referenced a Bloomberg article. I've yet to see any other references to that number. Nintendo won't be making it's official year-end report until the end of this month.

BTW, they will launch the GC in Europe this Friday (May 3rd) and expect to have 500K units available. There was a report that 30K units were pre-ordered in the UK alone.

Should send a clear message to MS about the Xboxes price structure. Lets hope that they act aggressively where they need to.

Wow! So Microsoft is going to have 2 weeks of good sales before they go down the tube again? Is anyone else getting tired of hearing this stuff? Every week is a new article on how bad MS is doing or how good MS is doing. I mean, I can see how some articles are valid, and I enjoy reading those, but come on. Of course sales are going to go up when they lower prices. That is the whole point, isn't it?

Apparently you are adverse to good news regarding the Xbox since you can't get enough of the bad news. The whole point is that people are interested in the console when it's brought to the same price point of the PS2. This is good news and hopefully Europe reflects the same thing.

Anyway, I didn't get the memo that positive Xbox news can't be reported here, but I did get those TPS reports done. :P

Good but did you get the Memo??

I will send you a copy of the memo.

This suddenly makes a lot of sense:

Just kidding ;) I gotta meeting with the Bobs, later!

Definitely good news. Now if they'd drop the price here and find a way to get the fickle Japanese to buy the systems which in turn will bring about better support from Japanese developers, they'll really be starting to turn things around.

I'd say they are getting ready to drop the price to counter the PS2's price drop. I don't know if they'll match the PS2 price after it drops the price, but hopefully they will decide to.

I'm wondering when they'll start releasing Japanese games here. I want to check out the new "Nobunaga's Ambition" game.

Tuan Jim

There is a difference between "good news" and "obvious news". The whole point of a price drop is to increase sales. For next week or so, those people who couldn't afford an X-box, but wanted one can pick one up. "Good news" is when after a month or so, sales are still up. That means that people are gaining new interest in the X-box.

Think about it this way. The Japanese sales looked good for the first few weeks, then market was saturated as everyone who wanted an X-box got one. Now its looking bad. When a story comes out in a month or so saying that things are still looking good, then I'll argee that it is good news. Until then, this is just a short term reaction to a price decrease.

My problem is that the Xbox cutting prices overseas doesn't help me. I would love to get a xbox but the more it cuts prices overseas, the longer it will be before we see a price drop here. This isn't good news. Minor successes due to a price drop are not good news, its pathetic.