Microsoft’s Xbox One Sales Hit 2 Million Amid Race to Catch Sony

December 15, 2013 Leave a comment

Microsoft’s Xbox One Sales Hit 2 Million Amid Race to Catch Sony

Microsoft Corp. (MSFT) said sales of the new Xbox One video-game console reached more than 2 million in its first 18 days on the market, as the company vies to keep pace with Sony Corp.’s PlayStation 4 during the holiday season. Sony said on Dec. 3 that it had sold 2.1 million of its machines since they went on sale Nov. 15 in North America. Microsoft, which introduced Xbox One on Nov. 22 in 13 countries, is selling pretty much every console it can get into stores and has “aggressive” plans to restock, said David Dennis, a spokesman for Xbox, in an interview yesterday.“Sales of both platforms are basically on par with each other,” said Colin Sebastian, an analyst at Robert W. Baird & Co. in San Francisco. “Production seems to be roughly the same for both platforms and they’re both doing well at retail.”

Microsoft and Sony are trying to attract gamers against a backdrop of declining console sales. From 2008 to 2012, the market shrank 32 percent to $13.3 billion, according to researcher NPD Group Inc. Both the $499 Xbox One and the $399 PlayStation 4 have more powerful graphics and entertainment applications than older models. To distinguish its machine, Microsoft has been pitching its motion-sensing camera, the ability to control live television and exclusive games like “Ryse: Son of Rome” and “Dead Rising 3.”

“We’re at 2 million at 18 days, and they were at about 2 million at 18 days, so we are running neck and neck,” Dennis said. He declined to provide a forecast for future sales.

Sales Projections

After replenishing initial inventories, Sony and Redmond, Washington-based Microsoft each may sell about 3 million consoles worldwide by the end of the year, according to projections by Sebastian as well as Michael Olson, an analyst at Piper Jaffray Cos. in Minneapolis.

Jack Tretton, president and chief executive officer of Sony’s U.S. computer entertainment division, said Nov. 11 that the Tokyo-based company is confident it can meet analysts’ sales estimates of 3 million units by year-end, and its own target of 5 million units by March. Sony expanded sales of the PlayStation 4 on Nov. 29, and it was available in 32 countries as of Dec. 3.

Both consoles sold more than 1 million units in their first 24 hours in stores.

To contact the reporter on this story: Dina Bass in Seattle at dbass2@bloomberg.net

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Kee Koon Boon (“KB”) is the co-founder and director of HERO Investment Management which provides specialized fund management and investment advisory services to the ARCHEA Asia HERO Innovators Fund (www.heroinnovator.com), the only Asian SMID-cap tech-focused fund in the industry. KB is an internationally featured investor rooted in the principles of value investing for over a decade as a fund manager and analyst in the Asian capital markets who started his career at a boutique hedge fund in Singapore where he was with the firm since 2002 and was also part of the core investment committee in significantly outperforming the index in the 10-year-plus-old flagship Asian fund. He was also the portfolio manager for Asia-Pacific equities at Korea’s largest mutual fund company. Prior to setting up the H.E.R.O. Innovators Fund, KB was the Chief Investment Officer & CEO of a Singapore Registered Fund Management Company (RFMC) where he is responsible for listed Asian equity investments. KB had taught accounting at the Singapore Management University (SMU) as a faculty member and also pioneered the 15-week course on Accounting Fraud in Asia as an official module at SMU. KB remains grateful and honored to be invited by Singapore’s financial regulator Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) to present to their top management team about implementing a world’s first fact-based forward-looking fraud detection framework to bring about benefits for the capital markets in Singapore and for the public and investment community. KB also served the community in sharing his insights in writing articles about value investing and corporate governance in the media that include Business Times, Straits Times, Jakarta Post, Manual of Ideas, Investopedia, TedXWallStreet. He had also presented in top investment, banking and finance conferences in America, Italy, Sydney, Cape Town, HK, China. He has trained CEOs, entrepreneurs, CFOs, management executives in business strategy & business model innovation in Singapore, HK and China.

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