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Console News - Record Sales for Microsoft's XBOX 360

Looks like Microsoft hit its record sales on the Xbox 360 at the closing of the last year, so big that Microsoft had to even pull from January and Februarys 360 inventory in order to keep pace with demands.

According to NPD, a U.S retail tracker, Microsoft sold approximately 1.9 million Xbox 360 consoles in December alone, closing up what Microsoft referred to as their biggest year. Apparently, 2010s sales rose up by 42 percent from those of 2009. Because of this, although Microsoft assures plenty consoles are still available, the demand was so high in December that they experienced out of supply situations during the holiday season that an estimated supplies constraint will occur in both January and February.

As someone who purchased their first 360 just two days ago, I personally saw both the Costco, Sams club, and Target in my area hold low on supply or be out of stock on the 360s. Costco, for one, explained to me that they had received one small shipment since December, but had now run out of those and had no word on when they would be receiving more. (Best Buy had the best price, however, and actual consoles in stock.)

Why did the Xbox sell so exceptionally well then, and especially all within one month? Well, besides the obvious holiday season, according to David Dennis, Group Product Manager with Xbox, the Kinect launch in the last third of the year played the largest factor. With the Kinect appealing to an entire new demographic of gamers, the Kinect was such an accelerate to the business and drove so many console sales that this was a situation we hadnt seen before, said Dennis to IGN. Black Friday brought in huge demand, that by the beginning of December sales rose so much higher than expected, leading the supplies issue.

According to Dennis, the amount of supply should be back to normal within the next 30 to 60 days.