James Delahunty
29 Apr 2007 19:53
Microsoft's Chief Financial Officer (CFO), Chris Liddell said that the company expects the platform-exclusive Halo 3 to boost the sales of Xbox 360 consoles when it is released later this year. "Halo 3 is clearly going to have a positive impact in two senses. One, it gives us more confidence in the number of consoles we think we're going to be able to sell next year," he said in a conference call while discussing Microsoft's Q3 results.
He added: "In terms of the direct impact, obviously it's a first-party product so it's reasonably profitable from our point of view, and it will be several hundreds of millions of dollars of revenue next year." Halo 3 is due out in Autumn and is a key product in Microsoft's 2007 line-up for the Xbox 360.
Slower sales of Xbox 360 consoles in Q3 resulted in a revenue drop for the company's Entertainment and Devices division. "Sales during the quarter in terms of sell-in were around 500,000 consoles. Sell-through was higher than that, so our inventory levels did come down to normal levels," Liddell said. "We did see a good inventory movement during the course of the quarter."
Source:
GamesIndustry.biz