Xbox 360 launch

The Xbox 360 was released on November 22, 2005 in United States, Canada, and Puerto Rico, December 2, 2005 in Europe, December 10, 2005 in Japan, February 2, 2006 in Mexico and Colombia, February 24, 2006 in South Korea, and was released March 16, 2006 in Hong Kong, Singapore, and Taiwan. The Xbox 360 is now available on March 23 in Australia and New Zealand after a 3-week delay.

Launch announcement

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MTV's Xbox 360 TV special hosted by actor Elijah Wood.

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Bill Gates on the Cover of Time Magazine with an Xbox 360

The official unveiling of the Xbox 360 occurred on Thursday, May 12, 2005 on MTV in a program called MTV Presents: The Next Generation Xbox Revealed hosted by actor Elijah Wood with a musical performance by the band The Killers. The Xbox 360 was also featured on the cover of Time magazine's May 23, 2005 issue with an article written by Lev Grossman. The cover shows Microsoft chairman Bill Gates holding up one of the units. In the article he says "It's perfect...The day Sony launches [the new PlayStation], and they walk right into Halo 3." Read more at wikiquote. Microsoft executive Robbie Bach later clarified this statement, saying "Philosophically the point Bill was trying to make is that we're not just going to ship and not have great stuff coming up." Gates himself later clarified that "Halo 3 will ship when Bungie is ready."

The system, along with some playable games, were shown off at E3 2005. The demos were running on "Xbox 360 Alpha Development Kits" which were Apple PowerMac G5s, chosen due to the PowerPC processor architecture that the machine shares with the Xbox 360. Microsoft claims that most of the games were running at 25-30% of full capacity because they were not running on actual systems.

Marketing

Viral advertising and alternate reality games

The promotional campaign for Xbox 360 began on March 14, 2005 with the opening of an alternate reality game called OurColony. Throughout March and April OurColony.net offered challenges to its community, rewarding solutions with cropped pictures of the console and game screenshots. On 12 May, 2005 the ARG section of OurColony closed, visitors were instead greeted with a promotional video hosted by J. Allard.

OrigenXbox360.com was the next viral marketing campaign from Microsoft. Unveiled on 27 September, 2005 the website, hosted by talking rabbits Boss and Didier offers visitors an opportunity to enter in various contests. The initial contest was a raffle that required participants to answer three trivia questions regarding the Xbox 360 for a chance to attend a promotional pre-launch event. New contests include a Halo 2 tournament and a competition to design a "Gamertile" (an avatar icon). Design for the website employs flash animation of a Bonsai tree and bland elevator music to create a serene environment that is punctuated by visually intense psychedelic episodes involving the host rabbits.

October 2005 saw the launch of "Hex168", another viral marketing campaign commissioned by Microsoft and executed by the Marden-Kane advertising agency. On 13 October, 2005, members of the TeamXbox forums were directed to the Hex168.com website through mysterious messages posted by someone called "Lutz". This website hosted a number of images that appeared to perpetuate obscure conspiracy theories, but sometimes contained oblique references to Xbox 360. The campaign was later revealed to be a U.S. contest that offered participants a chance to win one of three hundred and sixty Xbox 360 console bundles six days before the official launch.

Xbox 360 Lounge

Xbox 360 Lounge at night

To boost Xbox 360 awareness in Japan, an "Xbox 360 Lounge" was constructed in Aoyama, Tokyo, close to a popular upscale shopping area. The lounge was comprised of three main areas: a 256 square meter event space equipped with five large display screens, an area containing Xbox 360 game kiosks, and a 70-seat café. It was open daily from November 1, 2005 to February 12, 2006.

Launch titles

Eighteen launch titles were available for customers in the United States, Canada and Puerto Rico on November 22, 2005. The European countries had fifteen titles available for the launch date of December 2, 2005. Japanese customers, however, only had six titles to choose from by the time the Xbox 360 was released on December 10, 2005. This discrepancy is partially accounted for by the time needed to localize the games.

File:COF2promoscreen.jpg	File:DOA4screen.jpg
Call of Duty 2	Dead or Alive 4
	File:FIFA06screen.jpg
Every Party	FIFA '06: Road to FIFA World Cup
File:Kameoscreenshot.jpg	File:NBALive06screen.jpg
Kameo: Elements of Power	NBA Live '06
File:Pdzscreen1.jpg	File:Pgr3screen04.jpg
Perfect Dark Zero	Project Gotham Racing 3

Title	North America	Europe	Japan
Amped 3	Yes	Yes	No
Call of Duty 2	Yes	Yes	No
Condemned: Criminal Origins	Yes	Yes	No
Every Party	No	No	Yes
FIFA '06: Road to FIFA World Cup	Yes	Yes	Yes
Gun	Yes	Yes	No
Kameo: Elements of Power	Yes	Yes	No
Madden NFL 06	Yes	Yes	No
NBA 2K6	Yes	No	No
NBA Live 06	Yes	Yes	No
Need for Speed: Most Wanted	Yes	Yes	Yes
NHL 2K6	Yes	No	No
Perfect Dark Zero (Collector's Edition available)	Yes	Yes	Yes
Peter Jackson's King Kong	Yes	Yes	No
Project Gotham Racing 3	Yes	Yes	No
Quake 4	Yes	Yes	No
Ridge Racer 6	Yes	No	Yes
Tetris: The Grandmaster Ace	No	No	Yes
Tiger Woods PGA Tour 06	Yes	Yes	No
Tony Hawk's American Wasteland	Yes	Yes	No

Regional sales

North America

Prelaunch reports assume that Microsoft intentionally restricted supply although there is no evidence to support this and Microsoft has said they are releasing all units into supply chains as quickly as possible. Evidence indicates that Microsoft launched with all consoles available at the time, and operating at maximum production capability (i.e. they did not withhold produced consoles). They did not, however, build up a sufficient supply of consoles to satisfy the entire demand at launch. This allowed them to launch several months earlier than would otherwise be possible, but also led to shortages.

Peter Moore, Microsoft corporate vice president, predicts that shipments will reach 10 million units worldwide by the end of 2006.

Immediately after the launch, reports about the new machine's technical glitches started coming out. Some reported the Xbox 360 crashing with errors, some reported the hard drive does not respond in certain situations while others report error messages during various games or unusually fast overheating. The manual contains warnings about not placing the Xbox 360 on soft surfaces or in enclosed spaces to avoid heating problems. Microsoft claims that these problems are to be expected on a large scale release for a console and the number of reports versus the number of consoles released was very minimal. Microsoft has stated that they will look into the reports and have offered assistance reachable by phone.

The high demand for the Xbox 360 led to some owners almost immediately re-selling their console for vastly inflated prices. eBay in particular was a popular location for such offers with thousands of consoles going up for auction, some selling for many times the original retail price. It was reported that 40,000 units appeared on eBay during the initial month of release, which would mean that 10% of the total supply was resold. As of February 18, 2006 at 4:59 EST, major online retailers were sold-out of both Xbox 360 packages (including Amazon.com, circuitcity.com and buy.com).

According to the NDP Group, North American sales totaled 326,000 units in November. In Canada, all 32,100 units available for launch were sold. By the end of 2005, Microsoft sold roughly 900,000 units.

Analysts believe Microsoft will not meet the original worldwide target of 2.75-3 million units sold in the first 90 days after launch., and Microsoft has revised their initial 90 day estimate down to 2.5 million units, though their 6 month sales estimate remains unchanged at 4.5 to 5.5 million consoles.

Europe

Microsoft confirmed that 300,000 units were available for the European launch. As in North America, thousands of Xbox 360 appeared on auction websites like eBay, selling for more than twice their retail price. The shortages led to some consumers criticising retailers, and others attacking Microsoft itself for failing to fill demand. In turn, some retailers blamed Microsoft for failing to provide enough consoles in the Christmas period. By the end of 2005, Microsoft sold 500,000 consoles in the region.

Japan

While other regions such as the United States or Europe enjoyed successful launches, sales in Japan have been deemed as a failure. In fact, only 96,982 units have sold by the end of March 5th, 2006.

Some believe this is mainly due to the other popular and prospective video game handheld consoles like the Game Boy Advance, Nintendo DS, and PlayStation Portable, all of which have sold far more than the Xbox 360. Others have also attributed this slow start to titles such as Dead or Alive 4 and Enchant Arm missing the launch date while others point to the marketing strategy that focused on selling the Xbox 360 as a fashionable item when customers were looking for an affordable or a high performance gaming console.

For his part, Famitsu Xbox 360 editor-in-chief Munetatsu Matsui pointed to DOA4's absence as the main factor behind the slow start. He even added information that over 60% of his readers had planned to buy the much anticipated Tecmo fighting game. The 2-day 62,135 sales figure of the Xbox 360 is a little past half of the 123,334 units of the old Xbox that Microsoft sold in the first 3 days in Japan in February 2002.

Initial predictions were highly optimistic as the highest rating launch game reviewed by Famitsu, Namco's Ridge Racer 6, scored 35 out of 40 stars. Namco expects to sell 500,000 copies of Ridge Racer 6 in Japan. It should be noted that this number is roughly equal to the number of Xbox units sold in Japan by November of 2005. Microsoft Japan executive Yoshihiro Maruyama stated that he expects sales of Xbox 360 in Japan to hit one million units sometime next year. Maruyama is widely credited for attracting support from Japanese game developers.

To entice people into buying the Xbox 360 some retailers are offering discounts on the system if they sign up for a 2 year broadband contract, similar to cell phone deals in the US.

On the day of the launch, Capcom unveiled their Xbox 360-exclusive sci-fi game Lost Planet, which features South Korean actor Lee Byung Hun in the lead role.

Latin America

The Xbox 360 was released in Mexico on February 2, 2006. The retailers such as Liverpool, Walmart, Blockbuster, Sams Club, CompuDabo, Game Planet, gdGames and Cyberbox have started to sell the console, games, and accessories. Some department stores are selling the console at $550 (6,000 pesos).

In Colombia, the Xbox 360 was released officially on the same date as in Mexico, Febreary 2, 2006. With a cost of $1'200.000 colombian pesos (aproximatly US$520), the premium package preorder was sold out almost inmediatly. Retailers such as Amacenes Éxito, Panamericana, Blockbuster, Pepe Ganga, K-Tronix, Carrefour, La 14, Vivero and Hiperbodega Alkosto, began selling since day one the console, games, and accesories.

Asia (Hong Kong, Singapore, South Korea, and Taiwan)

The Xbox 360 was released in South Korea on 24 February, 2006.

It was released in Taiwan on 2 March, 2006. Promotions included one free limited edition PGR3 faceplate bundled for the initial shipment, and a gamepad-game combo pack containing Kameo and a wireless gamepad.

The launch date for Hong Kong and Singapore is 16 March, 2006, delayed from original 2 March, 2006 launch date. In Hong Kong, there are promotions include: free PGR3 faceplate with purchase of selected titles, DOA4 collectibles with purchase of an extra game, and reduced price when purchased with cross-promotional items.

China

Microsoft have not announced any release dates for the Xbox 360 in China, instead announcing that they plan to take a "careful approach" to the release in the region.

Australia and New Zealand

The Xbox 360 was released in Australia and New Zealand on March 23, 2006, three weeks after the initially projected release date. According to GfK, a German institute specializing in market researchanalysis, the Xbox 360 launch was the most successful in the country's history, selling over 30,000 consoles in the first four days.

Microsoft elected not to package an Xbox Live headset with the premium system configuration, a Media Remote is included instead. In addition to the two system bundles, Microsoft released a VIP pack priced at AU$149.95, that contained Perfect Dark Zero, a Faceplate, Wireless Controller, promotional DVD, and memembership to the Xbox 360 VIP website. Purchased separately, the price of the items would add up to AU$209.85.