COMMENT: It appears that Microsoft have got their Xbox knickers in a twist following our story yesterday that retailers are not happy with the sales success of the Xbox 360 over the stunning success of the Nintendo and Sony offerings.
These are the facts the Nintendo Wii followed by the Sony Playstation 2 and the Sony PS3 have out sold Microsoft’s Xbox 360 for several months in Australia and despite a shot in arm from the launch of Halo 3 the Microsoft console offering has failed dismally against both old and new gaming technology.
Following our story yesterday when we reported that several retailers are having doubts about the Xbox 360 and its ability to pull in game console and software sales this year some journalists took umbrage to our story. Mariana Cidade, PR Manager of the Entertainment & Devices Division at Microsoft Australia managed to suck in ItWire journalist Alex Zaharov-Reutt with her spin for the fledgling games console which retailers say is a “distant third cousin” to highly popular offerings from Nintendo and Sony.
She at no time called SmartHouse or ChannelNews to rebut our story instead she got into the ear of a competitor who went on to gush about the so called success of the Xbox 360. What Cidade is reported to have told ITWire is “We are happy with where we are in the market right now. We’re significantly ahead of where we planned to be this financial year, and selling well both on the software and hardware side.”
In other words Microsoft have lowered their expectations for the Australian market and are now happy to chuff along in third spot behind Sony and Nintendo.
Microsoft claims that they have sold 320,000 Xbox 360 units in Australia since launching two years ago. They have. However Sony who launched their PS3, 12 months ago have already sold 240,000 units of the PS3 Blu ray console and anticipate selling another 200,000 this year. They have also sold an additional 250,000 units of their PS2 console and 100,000 units of their hand held PSP portable player.
Nintendo have blitzed all of them selling over 350,000 units of the Nintendo Wii in 12 months. They have also sold an additional 600,000 Nintendo DS handheld units.
Cidade then said” In terms of games, which was one of the concerns raised in the survey, Cidade says: “We have a great line-up of games coming up. For core gamers we have titles like Gears of War 2, Fable 2, Too Human, Halo Wars etc, while casual or potential gamers will enjoy the likes of Banjo Kazooie, Guitar Hero 4, Rock Band and Dance Revolution, as well as a number of other really exciting titles we haven’t announced yet.”
The only problem with this claim is that the bulk of these games is multiplatform and will also be available on the Sony console. On the other hand Sony has several titles coming that will be exclusive to the PS3 including Resistance 2, Kill Zone, Motorstorm, Little Big Planet, Bull Quiz TV and Zero Chrome.
On the other hand Nintendo has several blockbuster games set to be rolled out including, Metroid Prime 3: Corruption, Super Mario Galaxy, Guitar Hero III, Endless Ocean, No More Heroes
Upcoming Games include, Mario Kart Wii (April 24, 2008), Wii Fit (May 8, 2008), Top spin 3 (May 23, 2008), Alone In The Dark (May 2008) and Super Smash Brothers Brawl (June 2008)
On the topic of networked, online gaming, Cidade notes that: “We have over 10 million members on Xbox LIVE globally, more than half of which are subscribed to the premium Gold service. That’s the largest social network on a video gaming console.” They do however for Xbox gamers in Australia the cost is $80 per annum Vs a free network with Sony.
Another big problem for Microsoft is the lack of a built in Blu ray player similar to the one built into the PS3. Overnight in London Microsoft has come out and said according to the BBC that they have no plans to release a Blu-ray add-on for the Xbox 360 and is instead backing digital delivery, the head of Xbox in the UK has said.
Microsoft stopped production of its HD-DVD player following the decision by Toshiba, the format’s creator, to concede victory to rival Blu-ray. Microsoft’s Neil Thompson said physical media would give way to downloads in the next two to three years. The only problem with this arument in Australia is the sheeer cost of bandwidth and the slow speeds that telecomunication carriers are delivering. For example a consumer using a BigPond regular service could well be up for $50 in additional costs on top of the purchase price of games and movies due to the size of movies and games.
He denied that Microsoft had abandoned customers who had purchased the HD-DVD add-on for their Xbox 360 consoles. “We said to people they had the choice; we didn’t force it on them as we didn’t put it in the box,” he said.
He said Microsoft had always planned to shift its focus to digital distribution of content. “Our belief was that in the lifetime of the Xbox 360 we were going to move to this online world and online distribution for content outside gaming.
“If we didn’t believe that we would have put a hi-def player in the console. The expanse and growth of consumption of digital content is exponential “But there was a time gap of us launching and getting to that world. We knew certain of our customers would want a hi-def format and we thought the most cost-efficient way of doing that was going down the hi-def peripheral route.”
For the Full BBC story go to their technology section:.
At the end of the day Microsoft were on the losing end of the HD DVD Vs Blu ray war and their arses are being kicked in the console war by the like of Sony and Nintendo. They were also forced to allocate over $1.3 Billion dollars last year for faulty Xbox 360 consoles that simply stopped due to shoddy parts and a “Red Ring Of Death” problem.
At SmartHouse we still get on average four emails a week from dissatisfied Xbox 360 customers and we stand by our story that some retailers are not happy with the sales success or lack of it for the Microsoft Xbox 360 which has not only been dropped in price around the world in an effort to stimulate sales but bundled with controllers and software in an effort to get traction.
