Microsoft's Original Goal Was to Sell 200 Million Xbox Ones

By wesleycopeland

Microsoft’s Phil Spencer says the company originally planned to sell through 200 million units.

In an interview with Stevivor, Spencer explained the original plan, and how that plan has altered since its inception.

“The goal that the team had was to figure out how could we sell 200 million game consoles,” says Spencer. “We’ve never seen a console sell that many units. The biggest individual console, the PS2, did 120 million or something like that.”

Spencer goes on to explain how the original idea of an all-in-one media system has been scaled back in some respects to refocus on being a gaming console first.

“When we came in after two-and-a-half years ago and started running the Xbox program,” continues Spencer, “I centred us back on not trying to become something other than a game console. You don’t earn the right to be relevant in other categories of usage for the console until you’ve earned the gaming right, so let’s go make sure that’s what we deliver.”

In terms of media usage – i.e. Netflix, YouTube, and so on – Spencer says people are watching as much TV as they are gaming. That said, Spencer believes the Xbox One needs to “succeed with gamers first before we get any permission to go do anything else.”

With Xbox One sales increasing by almost 1000 percent in the UK following the release of the new 500GB and 1TB Xbox One S models, one could argue that Spencer’s outlook, at least in the short-term, is working.

Wesley Copeland is a freelance news writer who writes terrible bios. For more obvious statements and video game chat, you should probably follow him on Twitter.

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