Linonut <linonut@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> espoused:
> * Roy Schestowitz peremptorily fired off this memo:
>
>> Microsoft?s is losing its grasp on the technology markets
>>
>> ,----[ Quote ]
>>| When I say the Xbox 360 is a disaster, I?m simply pointing to evidence that,
>>| as suggested by an ?inside? source in a recent article, Microsoft released
>>| the 360 anticipating a 1 in 3 failure rate, and figured Bill?s big bank
>>| account could weather the storm.
>> `----
>>
>> http://www.n4g.com/industrynews/News-106703.aspx
>
> And Bill doesn't quite yet have the "information highway" yet, either.
>
Wow, I didn't realise that they *knew* that they would have 33.333% of
upset customers, returns, irritated retail channels...
The worst bit about this is people who make a return will *still* have
an overally probability of 11% of still having a broken machine. In
fact:
33% of people get 1 broken Xbox360
11% of people get 2 broken Xbox360s in a row
4% of people get 3 broken Xbox360s in a row
Compared with PS3, where 5% of people will get 1 broken, 0.025% will get
2 broken in a row, and 0.000625% will get 3 broken in a row.
Assume that both Xbox360 and PS3 have sold around 20 million consoles
each, then we have the following:
Total Customers Customers Customers
Sales with with with
20million 1 broken 2 broken 3 broken
--------------------------------------------------------------
Xbox360 6,666,666 2,222,222 740,741
PS3 1,000,000 50,000 2,500
--------------------------------------------------------------
The Xbox tail continues, with 246,913 people with 4 broken in a row,
82,000 with 5 in a row, 27,000 with 6 in a row, and an amazing 9,100
with 7 in row and, wait for it, 3,048 with 8 broken Xbox360s in a row,
and a mere 1,000 with 9 in a row.
So, Xbox360 upset customers only catch up with PS3s "3 in a row" numbers
by the time those poor folk have had 8 or 9 failed Xbox360s.
Some time ago, one of the technical on-line press sites ran a story
about how the author had had 5 failed Xboxes in a row. Many people
might've considered that unlnikely, but as you can see above, he would
have been only one of about 82,000 people who'd suffered the same fate.
I know that this is really just a geometric progression, of course, but
it's still interesting, nevertheless. It also shows that Microsoft's
sales are inflated, either by 33%, or by the sum of the GP to infinity,
although the latter GP terms are not so significant. If we just
count the first four terms, of 20 million sales, we have 9.8 million
fails... so it really depends on whether Microsoft double-counted.
My expectation is that they would. This would mean that their actual
real sales are about 10 million, rather than about 20 million, using
the sales assumption above. If they only consider the real sales rather
than replacements, then their 20 million sales would be correct, of
course. But somehow, that doesn't sound like Microsoft to me.
My challenge for the folk at The Register is to identify as many of the
1,000 people who've suffered the 9 failures in a row. These people
deserve a very special hall of fame, all of their own. Perhaps they
could be given a free copy of Vista or something ;-)) or maybe Sony
could identify them, and give them a free PS3, with Linux pre-installed.
--
| Mark Kent -- mark at ellandroad dot demon dot co dot uk |
| Cola faq: http://www.faqs.org/faqs/linux/advocacy/faq-and-primer/ |
| Cola trolls: http://colatrolls.blogspot.com/ |
| My (new) blog: http://www.thereisnomagic.org |
|
|
