Xbox 360 sales will top 2.5m by 2006 - survey

October 11th, 2005, 23:26 Posted By: wraggster

Market analysis firm Wedbush Morgan Securities has published a new survey on hardware sales in the US and Europe which predicts that combined Xbox 360 sales in both regions will top 2.5 million by 2006.

The report's authors calculated the figure, which breaks down to 1 million consoles sold in Europe and 1.5 million in the States, based on the assumption that manufacturing began in August.

The report also assumes that 100,000 consoles per week were initially being produced, with that figure rising to 150,000 or more by the end of the year - making for a weekly average of around 130,000 consoles.

Wedbush Morgan also forecasts that Xbox 360 purchasers will buy two games at launch, and a further three games after two months - with the same ratio applying to rival consoles PlayStation 3 and Revolution when they go on sale next year. Xbox software sales will total USD 380 million in 2005, according to the report.

The survey focuses on current generation hardware too, revealing that PS2 has an installed base of 51 million units in the US and Europe. The figure for Xbox stands at 18 million, while for GameCube it's 13.2 million.

Wedbush Morgan predicts that Sony will slash the PS2's price tag from USD 199 to USD 149 on or near the Xbox 360 launch date - November 22 in the US, December 2 in Europe and December 10 in Japan. There's no suggestion that Microsoft might follow suit and reduce the price of the current generation Xbox, as Wedbush Morgan believes manufacturing costs are too high to make a further price cut viable.

The report also predicts that hardware sales will rise to 40 million this year - up from 35 million in 2004.

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