Jatkoa myyntiluvuille. Gafissa vähän pyöritellään numeroita:
Anyway, number crunching. When MS said they would "soon" be reaching 10M shipments, I assumed them to mean by the end of the quarter, since that's typically how shipment numbers are given, and it would be a reasonable amount of time for them to reach that milestone. It seems a lot of others took "soon" to mean, "prolly like tomorrow or maybe the next day," and are expecting MS to have shipped 11M or even 12M by the end of the quarter.
So let's take a look at their shipments thus far.
XB3 | XB2
4Q13 3.9 | 3.5
1Q14 1.2 | 0.8
2Q14 (1.1)
3Q14 (2.4)
4Q14 (???)
After telling us they'd shipped 1.2M Bones in 1Q14, they also pointed out retailers were already overstocked at that point, so a channel drawdown would be affecting their shipments in the quarter that followed. Unfortunately, the quarter that followed is also the quarter that MS started combining the shipments in their report, which makes it hard to be sure exactly how many Bones they've shipped.
Prior to 2Q14, their shipments had been just over half XB3, but that caused them to become overstocked on XB3, and they made no mention of stock surpluses for XB2. So the majority of shipments that quarter were likely the selling-as-expected XB2. Since XB2 likely accounted for at least 650k-750k, it's likely XB3 shipments were in the 400k range for the quarter. Pretty low.
Shipments rebounded some in 3Q14, but we still get no breakdown. Still, I think that's around the time of the Tier2+ rollouts, so XB3 shipments may have been up around 1.2M-1.3M.
So for the year, we have 1.2M + ~0.4M + ~1.3M, or 2.9M total. Add that to the 3.9M they'd shipped in 2013, and you're at 6.8M shipments through September.
So to hit 10M from there, they'd need another 3.2M shipments in 4Q14. That's 110% of the total they shipped in the first three quarters of the year. I'd call that doable; XB2's second holiday quarter was 98% of what it did the three quarters prior, though as I recall, they had to stuff the channels pretty thoroughly to hit that mark. But again, 110% of Q1-Q3 seems achievable.
Now, to hit 11M shipments, they'd need to ship 4.2M in 4Q14. That would be 145% of their Q1-Q3 sales, which strikes me as far less likely. 12M Xbones shipped (Q4 = 179% of Q1-Q3) is just fantasy land though. PS3 managed a strong 129% its second Christmas, but it had early production issues which tipped the balance a bit. Amusingly, thanks to its crazy, year-round demand, Wii's 4Q07 was only 70% of its Q1-Q3.
So, I would say that it's likely they hit their projected 10M shipments through 2014. It seems fairly unlikely they shipped significantly more than that though. I'd be surprised if they're over 10.5M shipped at this point. That's a lot of extra units to stuff in to a channel that doesn't hold very many to begin with anyway. As I keep trying to remind people, supply chains are actually measured in weeks, and they reach in to the future.
So let's compare pace to Sony. Their numbers are pretty straightforward, and while we don't have 4Q14 shipments from them yet, they shouldn't be too hard to deduce. We know they're at 18.5M sold-through, so sold-in is likely to be right around 20M. It could be as low as 19.5M, but with only 1M units in the channel — and a good portion of those still on the container ships — I think we'd have heard more about supplies running low. Similarly, shipments could be as high as 20.5M, but 2M units in the channel seems like too much. So probably 20M, give or take. Putting that up against the XB3 guesstimates looks like this.
PS4 | XB3
4Q13 4.5 | 3.9
-----------------
1Q14 3.0 | 1.2
2Q14 2.5 | 0.4
3Q14 3.3 | 1.3
4Q14 6.5 | 3.2
-----------------
2014 15.5 | 6.1
2014 didn't go very well for MS. They were outsold more than 2.5:1 by a competitor with no games who were too stingy to cut their prices. This year, with no more markets to launch in to, MS will be lucky to do another 6M shipments again. 4M-5M seems more likely. On the other hand, with a solid, year-long lineup of games and a significant price cut that should be due any time now, Sony seem easily poised to push near 20M shipments in 2015, likely outselling MS by around 4:1 globally. So by this time next year, we'll probably be looking at 40M vs. 15M shipped, give or take a million or two on each side. That's assuming Morpheus doesn't become a phenomenon and kick a few million extra units for Sony.
http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?p=146318201#post146318201