Microsoft Snows Xbox 360 European Hardware Numbers

While Microsoft's Aaron Greenberg thinks Sony stopping the PR snow jobs is a good idea, the rest of his company apparently doesn't think it should do the same. Shane Kim, corporate VP of Microsoft and head of the company's games studios, has been quibbling about the size of the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360's installed bases in Europe.

When it was put to Kim in an interview that Microsoft is being "rocked" (we think that's a bad thing) by the PS3 in Europe, Kim came back with, "Really?"

The interviewer then told him,"That's what the news says”, to which Kim retorted, "That's what the Sony guys say."

Asked if he was actually disputing the numbers, Kim rolled out some spiel about how well the 360 is doing then said of the GTA IV launch, "I haven't seen any official statements from European retailers, but you saw the GameStop stuff."

Chart-Track details its own audited figures for UK software sales by platform on a weekly basis. Okay, you have to pay for the broken down figures, but we imagine that payment is not beyond Microsoft's budget.

Also, from an internal communication point of view.... Kim apparently missed Microsoft's European arm dishing up figures for GTA IV in the UK.

Aside from that, he was actually being asked about the size of Microsoft's base in Europe rather than how well GTA IV did on each system. On that question, he still did not give us any hard figures that contradict Sony's claim that it has now surpassed the user-base of the 360 with the PS3 in Europe.

Kim isn't the only Microsoft man to call into dispute Sony's announced lead in the console wars over here. Recently Aaron Greenberg (director of product management for Xbox 360 and Xbox Live and the very chap who told Sony to stop the snow jobs) said he thought Sony claiming the lead was "not based on actual data".

Still, it must all be academic as far as Kim's concerned, because he thinks "it's way too early" to call a winner in this generation's console war. When can we call it? "When somebody's well on their way to reaching 100 million units", apparently.

Again, a little internal communication at Microsoft might at least keep the snow jobs on message. On May 15th this year, Don Mattrick, senior VP of the Interactive Entertainment Business in the Entertainment and Devices Division at Microsoft (phew!) said, "History has shown us that the first company to reach 10 million in console sales wins the generation battle." This was related to news that it had... sold 10 million Xbox 360s in North America.

So, in spite of his own company's claims clashing with his assertion, Kim still feels he can say, “The winner of last generation isn't the winner of this generation, they're in third.”

Too early to call a winner, but not too early to call a loser?

^{Source: Wired}