The Xbox 360 launched November 22, 2005. Within two years, Microsoft unceremoniously discontinued its predecessor. The company expects the 360 to be with us a little longer this time.
Yusuf Mehdi, a senior Microsoft executive, told Official Xbox Magazine that the company has a goal for the Xbox 360 of reaching a 100 million-unit installation base. To do that, it would have to sell another 25 million Xbox 360 consoles, which Mehdi figures will happen over the next five years.
Moreover, Mehdi said the company expects to sell it to new customers “by hitting new price points, getting new classes of entertainment to come with the Xbox, and breaking into new customer segments.”
For those keeping score, production of the original Xbox was discontinued in 2007. The last game for it, Madden NFL 09, was published in August, 2008. GameStop stopped accepting Xbox games and consoles for trade ended in April 2010.
Microsoft aiming for 100 million Xbox 360s sold – and one billion next gen consoles [Official Xbox Magazine]
Comments
18 responses to “The 360 Figures To Hang Around A Lot Longer Than The Original Xbox Did”
With the reception XB1 got, MS would have to keep the 360 afloat as long as possible.
Beat me to it lol
I think MS in a way discontinued the Xbox a few months before 360 launched. They dropped support for it like the plague. Sure, it still had multiplatform games in 2006 like Ghost Recon and Splinter Cell, but the Xbox versions were very half-assed compared to the Xbox 360 versions.
I really can’t see MS continuing to support the Xbox 360 from here on in. Besides the Kinect games (which you haven’t been able to give away for a while now), they’ve only released Gears of War 3, Halo 4, Gears of War Judgment and maybe a Forza title in the past few years.
As I recall, games for the original XBox dried up almost as soon as the 360 was announced. The rapidity of the cutoff was stunning at the time.
On the other hand, you can still buy new PS2 games in some places (mostly SingStar and the like), and at the time the PS3 was announced it was still possible to get PS1 games in some places.
That may not happen with the PS3 however, as it doesn’t have the level of market ubiquity held by its predecessors.
This console should be boycotted.
I was a Playstation guy with the 1 & 2 and watched numerous rival consoles get buried, but have stood on the sidelines without owning a PS3 or x360, just playing them at other people’s houses, and the 360 won out it is clear.
With Sony’s troubles, Microsoft had the opportunity to end Sony entirely by making the better console which wouldn’t be too hard, but they have snatched defeat from the jaws of victory by coming up with this completely idiotic disaster that is the Xbox One. Sony will survive easy as long as they don’t do something equally stupid.
Seriously, Obama should be stepping in to tell Microsoft that the ridiculous operating conditions and clear-as-day security/privacy risk are plain stupid and unfair, and recommend they revise the console into something people should want.
Something tells me the U.S. government has more important shit to do than to have the president give a personal call to a company that is not a single person and tell it that it is making video games wrong.
Your life should be boycotted for such an “idiotic disaster” of a post.
cant stay around to much longer, its already out dated by years. Not much more they can improve on.
3rd world markets were buying the ps1 and ps2 for many years after the 1st world countries stopped caring. In massive numbers.
I can’t remember how recently… but it was only a few years ago that the PS3 started selling in South America.
If they announce a $99 price point at E3… or the theory that you can run your 360 through the XB1 to enable backwards compatibility proves correct then you’ll see them hit those numbers.
Yeah give me a $99 360 and I’ll get an S model for under the other TV and ignore the next gen for a few years…
At which point I won’t be getting that DRM machine masquerading as a console.
…or games. 🙁
I’d grab a $99 one to replace my noisy chunky model.
Before the 360 is discontinued I would love MS to come up with a solution for backing up the contents of a 360 to a HDD so I can actually hold onto the hundreds of dollars worth of games and DLC I bought and transfer them to a new 360 if my old one happens to die.
If this happens, the goodwill might make me slightly more inclined to give the Xbox One a look.
You know you can re-download anything in your purchase history. As for Save Files you can put those to the cloud if you like.
Yeah, I already plan on buying another 360 as a backup to do just that.
I’m talking about once they turn off the 360 servers and you won’t be able to re-download any more, so if the xbox storing them dies I lose everything (50 odd games + tons of DLC). While it may seem a long way away, it will inevitably happen.
I’d like to hold onto all that stuff because:
a) I paid for it and it’s rightly mine.
b) I’m a collector, I still play games I owned as far back as the Master System.
Yeah I know what you mean, by that time hackers might be the answer i guess