During the announcement of their newly extended warranty plan earlier today, Microsoft also dropped a bit of news that seems overlooked in favor of the more widely beneficial revelation: they missed their console shipment goal for fiscal 2007.
According to Gamasutra, Microsoft has admitted to only shipping 11.6 million consoles, as opposed to the 12 million they had originally estimated. While a paltry 400,000 consoles may not seem like a huge dent when compared to their solid lead in this generation’s console race, you may also recall that the estimate was originally placed at 13-15 million (only to be reduced to 12 in January).
Does this mean doom and gloom for the megacorporation? Absolutely not, but it does signal one of two things;
1) Interest in competing consoles is increasing at a greater rate than Microsoft had anticipated (doom and gloom scenario)
2) Interest in consoles has dropped across the board as compared to MS’ estimates (melancholy kitten scenario)
With Sony altering their shipment estimates for the PS3 from 4 million to 2 million last August, I’m going to assume the melancholy kitten scenario is the more adorable likely of the two, but until final sales numbers come in, no one will know for sure.
