Ahead of E3, Microsoft Shows 30 Million Xbox 360 Users (MSFT)

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By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Published
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XBOX LogoMicrosoft Corp. (NASDAQ: MSFT) is making some strong projections and updates for its Xbox video gaming system.  The company noted that global sales of the Xbox 360 unit have now crossed the 30 million mark, and the Xbox LIVE has passed the 20 million mark.

The company is now claiming that the 28% growth so far in 2009 is the highest percentage growth in hardware sales of any console.  The company claims that Xbox owners have 8.3 game titles per console.

Microsoft also claims that U.S. consumers have spent some $14.5 billion across all categories on Xbox 360.  Its third party publishers have generated $5.9 billion to date at US retail.

If you want to know why this data is coming out now, the reason is that this is ahead of next week’s Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3).   We’ll be putting together an outlook for the video game sector companies in the next day for what to expect from them at next week’s 2009 E3 conference.

GameStop Corp. (NYSE: GME) has been under pressure from last week’s earnings outlook and its forecast, while Take-Two Interactive Software Inc. (NASDAQ: TTWO) has come out slightly better.

Other than the rather different Halo Wars in the mega-hit Halo series, it’s time for a new mega-hit.

JON C. OGG
May 28, 2009

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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.

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