BALLMER: 360 "SORT-OF" PREVAILING

March 20th, 2006, 17:03 Posted By: wraggster

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, talking to Fortune Magazine, has professed himself to be pleased with the delay to Sony's PlayStation 3. But, he's admitted that Microsoft is only "Sort-of on track" as far as Xbox 360 shipments are concerned, adding: "Though it would've been nice at Christmas to have one for everyone who wanted one."
Ballmer also revealed that a bottleneck from a component supplier (which he refused to name) continues to affect the manufacture of Xbox 360s, but he insisted that Microsoft should still manage to sell five million units of its next-gen console by June.

Naturally, he was unable to resist the temptation to crow at Sony's belated admission that the PS3 will not launch until November: "In every other generation, the first guy to 10 million consoles was the number one seller in the generation. Did we just get an even better opportunity to be the first guy to 10 million? Yeah, of course we did."

He added that the PS3 announcement made no difference to Microsoft's production plans for the Xbox 360: "We've been saying 'make them faster' before yesterday. We're clearly in the phase where it's about how fast we can make them."
Ballmer singled out Spain, France, Italy and Japan as territories in which Microsoft needs to launch "major pushes" in order to sell more Xbox 360s. And he remained firmly athwart the fence in the Blu-Ray versus HD-DVD debate: "Sony's going to try and define that as a fundamental battleground, but I don't think it is a fundamental battleground. I don't care whether it's Blu-Ray or HD-DVD, there's not going to be a lot of content in either format this year."

Ballmer clearly believes - as well he might - that Microsoft can grab the lead in this console cycle: "I am palpably optimistic. I think we are absolutely in the game for the market position it would be nice to have." Microsoft has currently got the jump over its rivals, but will it sell enough Xbox 360s to garner a sustainable lead in market share terms, once Sony's PlayStation 3 and Nintendo's Revolution hit the shops at the end of this year? Only time will tell.

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