14 DAY TRIAL // Why would Microsoft shoot itself in the foot by shifting the focus on Xbox vNext when Xbox 360 and Kinect are selling at tremendous rates, as Peter Klein, chief financial officer at Microsoft put it when the company announced third-quarter results last month? Recent speculation reveals that not only has Xbox 720 in a very early development form been made available to game developers, but that additional news of the console will be presented at E3 in June 2011, according to Develop.
Although it appears that Microsoft will not in fact unveil Xbox 720 to the world next month, fact is that talk about the next-generation Xbox would only serve to unnecessarily shift consumer focus away from Xbox 360 and Kinect.
This is not something that the software giant can afford, especially since the excellent financial results of the Entertainment & Devices Division contributed to compensate the drop in revenue for Windows.
“Entertainment & Devices Division grew 60% year-over-year, fueled by Kinect for Xbox 360, the fastest-selling consumer electronics device in history, continued strong Xbox 360 console sales and growth of Xbox Live,” the software giant noted a little over a week ago.
In the third fiscal quarter of 2011 Microsoft managed to ship no less than 2.3 million Kinect NUI (natural user interface) sensors.
This means that Kinect has now passed the 10 million sold units milestone, since the peripheral was initially introduced last year.
With Xbox 360 console sales increasing by 79%, the overall revenue of the Entertainment & Devices Division also went up to $1.935 billion, compared to just $1.21 billion the year before.
With the $2 billion mark in sight for the Entertainment & Devices Division, it would be a risky move for Microsoft to introduce Xbox 720 details at this point in time, since the move is bound to impact current Xbox 360 sales.