Analyst: Microsoft To Ship 300,000 More Xbox 360s

According to American Technology Research analyst Paul-Jon McNealy, Microsoft is expected to ship another 300,000 units of the Xbox 360 to retail in the next week in North America, as part of its attempts to alleviate major supply problems for the next-gen console, which has essentially been sold out since its November 22 launch date. McNealy said in a research note, reported on by Reuters, that Microsoft would be have issues in shipping 1.5 million to 1.8 million Xbox 360s worldwide by the end of December, suggesting shipments would be lower than these figures. In particular, ATR's McNealy commented: "We believe that [Microsoft] has tried to keep expectations low for retailers this holiday with the hopes of over- delivering. We believe that over-delivering is unlikely at this point." McNealy has estimated 300,000 to 400,000 units for the launch in North America on November 22, around 300,000 for the European launch on December 2, and 100,000 for the console's Japanese debut on December 10 (somewhat less than the 150,000 estimated by Japanese firm Enterbrain). These figure plus this week's American restock would put the Xbox 360's installed base at 1 million units, with the possibility of the company shipping further units around or after Christmas. Microsoft eventually hopes to ship around 3 million units in the first 3 months. Microsoft's CEO Steve Ballmer recently commented on shortages to the Ottawa Citizen newspaper, indicating chip manufacturing problems were holding things up further, and suggesting: "In these new consumer electronics devices based on new chips, there's always the question of what yield will you get out of the manufacturing process of the new chip. We're getting a little less, but not much less than the yields we expected, and we know that the yields we expected will probably outrun supply."