Phil Spector, head of Micorosft’s Xbox division, revealed the division’s goal back when Don Mattrick ran shop. And that goal is a real doozy.
Spencer spoke to Stevivor, Spencer said that the Xbox division was aiming to sell 200 million Xbox Ones. He didn’t specify if the plan was for the original Xbox One only or if it included update like the Scorpio. Either way, 200 million units is a huge number. As a reference, that’s a little less than the entire Game Boy FAMILY, from the original brick to the Game Boy Micro, sold during its lifespan.
“The goal that the team had was to figure out how could we sell 200 million game consoles,” Spencer explained. “We’ve never seen a console sell that many units. The biggest individual console, the PS2, did 120 million or something like that.”
For the record, Sony stated it had shipped 150 million units worldwide, setting the individual sales record for a console.
“The approach the team took,” he continued, “was people are moving to OTT Video Services and television’s getting disrupted–and if we could build a console that could be at the center of this transition and really embrace not only people playing video games, but also people with the changing habits in television, you really take the console market and the gaming market and you expand it potentially.”
OTT stands for over-the-top video, referring to services like Hulu and Netflix. If you remember, Microsoft’s original grand strategy for the Xbox One was to win the living room. As Spencer puts it, the original focus of the console was to “start up building TV content as a first-party capability.” Xbox Entertainment Studios was created as a way to create content for the platform. The goal of 200 million unit sales was set when Mattrick felt Xbox One’s position as a media powerhouse would drive the sales.
That was the position that alienated gamers at E3 2013 and sunk the console at launch. When Spencer took over the Xbox division in 2015, one of his first acts was to reposition the console as a gaming platform first.
“When we came in after two-and-a-half years ago and started running the Xbox program, I centered us back on not trying to become something other than a game console,” Spencer said. “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.”
Since Microsoft no longer reports sales figures for Xbox, no one knows how close they are to the original magic number. Microsoft recently reported 400 million active Windows 10 devices, and Xbox One qualifies as a Windows 10 device. I’d be surprised if they hit one-eighth that total.
