Microsoft Director: Xbox 360 To Triumph In 2008

Microsoft Director: Xbox 360 To Triumph In 2008 Microsoft Director: Xbox 360 To Triumph In 2008

In a recent interview, Microsoft's director of product management for Xbox 360 and Xbox Live, Aaron Greenberg, expressed his opinion that although Playstation 3 sales have surpassed those of Xbox 360 for several months, he expects the total Xbox 360 sales across 2008 to surpass those of its rival.

"We're not seeing any actual market data that's indicating that there's any actual momentum right now around the PS3", said Aaron Greenberg. "I mean, if we look at US sell-through data, since the Blu-ray format war ended, the PS3 sales have actually been down month per month, and our expectation is that if we look at the whole year of 2008, we'll continue to extend our lead relative to the PS3".

"Sony has announced, as part of their financial reporting for their fiscal year, that they're basically expecting to be flat year over year. They did nine-point-some million units of PS3, and they expect to do ten million this next year, and they've been pretty clear that they're not going to be aggressive on price to gain share; that they're very much focused on profitability."

"So we're not really sensing that they're going to be as aggressive this year as people had hoped." - Aaron Greenberg still speaking - . "Then you have titles like Killzone slipping, Home moving now... So it'll eventually see how it works out, but in the US I think things are great."

"In Europe we've had a lot of success following our price drop - we did that in advance of GTA - and we saw sustained run rates where we're basically doubling our sales. In Europe you can get an Xbox 360 for almost half the price of a PS3, so we believe we're going to continue to see sustained momentum there."