Basicamente dice que el retraso de PS3 ha puesto a 360 en una mejor posicion para convertirse en lider del mercado. Segun MS, el primero en llegar a los 10 millones ganara la carrera, y dicen tener ahora la mejor oportunidad para conseguirlo.
Tambien dicen no haber cambiado su proyeccion de cuota de mercado, y que ya estaban produciendo consolas tan rapido como podian desde antes del anuncio de Sony.
Comentan que por problemas de disponibilidad la consola vendio en Norte America solo 600.000 unidades el año pasado, y que sigue habiendo un cuello de botella en la produccion por culpa de un proveedor al cual no ha especificado, pero aun asi, afirman ir mas o menos segun lo previsto y esperan tener 5 millones de consolas vendidas en Junio.
En la pasada generacion PlayStation supero por un amplio margen a sus rivales con 101 millones de PS2 mientras que MS solo coloco 24 millones de Xbox y Nintendo 21 millones de GameCube
MS planea una importante potenciacion de 360 en Francia, Italia, España y Japon. Mercados donde la primera Xbox no funciono segun lo esperado.
Ballmer pone en duda las espectativas de Sony de que el Blu-Ray de PS3 sea una ventaja sobre 360, que pronto tendra un periferico lector de HD-DVD. Dice que en ambos formatos habra muy poco contenido durante este año, por lo que no sera un campo de batalla fundamental.
Tambien dice Ballmer que por ahora el factor tiempo es lo que importa, aunque no vaya a ser asi siempre, dice que ahora estan en la fase donde lo que importa es como de rapido pueden hacerlas.
Microsoft CEO says Playstation 3's November launch gives Xbox a shot to be the top gaming console.
By Telis Demos, FORTUNE reporter
March 17, 2006: 12:18 PM EST
NEW YORK (FORTUNE) - After Sony announced on Tuesday that the Playstation 3 won't launch until November, the Xbox 360 is in a better position to become the top gaming console, says Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer.
"In every other generation, the first guy to 10 million consoles was the number one seller in the generation," Ballmer told FORTUNE in an interview on Thursday afternoon. "Did we just get an even better opportunity to be the first guy to 10 million? Yeah, of course we did."
But Microsoft (Research) will not formally revise its projected market share for the Xbox 360, and it will not speed up production to capitalize on Sony's delay, because it's already producing the Xbox as fast as possible. "We've been saying 'make them faster' before yesterday," says Ballmer.
When the Xbox 360 launched last holiday season, Microsoft had its own missteps. Shortages led to sales of only 600,000 systems from the debut on November 22 through December 31, far fewer than Microsoft and market analysts expected.
There is still a production bottleneck because of problems with a component vendor, whom Ballmer declined to name, but he expects Microsoft to sell 5 million systems by June. "We're sort-of on track," he says, "though it would've been nice at Christmas to have one for everyone who wanted one."
Previous generations of the Playstation outsold the Xbox by a wide margin. Worldwide in 2005, Sony sold 101 million Playstation 2 units, while Microsoft sold 24 million Xboxes and Nintendo sold 21 million Gamecubes, according to UBS. Even during the 2005 holidays, after Xbox 360 had debuted, Playstation 2 sold 1.4 million units in December, according to The NPD Group, which tracks sales of video games and game platforms.
Microsoft plans "major pushes" of the Xbox 360 in France, Italy, Spain and Japan -- markets where the first generation Xbox didn't perform as well as Microsoft hoped.
"I am palpably optimistic," Ballmer says. "I think we are absolutely in the game for the market position it would be nice to have."
Ballmer dismissed Sony's (Research) expectation that Playstation's Blu-Ray DVD player will give it an advantage over the Xbox, which will soon offer an HD-DVD peripheral. "Sony's going to try and define that as a fundamental battleground, but I don't think it is a fundamental battleground," he says. "I don't care whether it's Blu-Ray or HD-DVD, there's not going to be a lot of content in either format this year."
For now, Ballmer says, the timing advantage is all that matters. "It's not going to be that way forever," he says, "but we're clearly in the phase where it's about how fast we can make them."