Microsoft’s Shane Kim: closest to 100 million wins console race

It wasn’t long ago that Microsoft‘s Don Mattrick, president of the company’s Interactive Entertainment division, opined that the first console to break 10 million unit sold was the winner of the console race. Of course, at that moment, the Xbox 360 just touched that threshold after NPD results of April poured in. Now we have VP Shane Kim saying that the winner of this generation’s console race will be the one closest to 100 million units sold. You know where to go for the full story.

 

As corporate VP of Microsoft Game Studios, Shane Kim was expected to agree with Don Mattrick‘s claims that a console would win as soon as it reaches 10 million sold. But instead, in an interview the VP furthered the finishing line of the next-generation console race to 100 million – or anything close to that:

I think it’s way too early to declare a winner. Some guys were trying to declare Nintendo the winner of this generation … [We can call the winner] when somebody’s well on their way to reaching 100 million units.

The latest NPD numbers from April 2008 showed that the Nintendo Wii ran circles around Sony and Microsoft’s offerings despite continued supply shortages, and as of late, is the current leader in hardware install base. One would argue that these reasons would be why Nintendo’s next-generation console would clearly be the winner, but Kim states otherwise:

… This is only the third year of our existence and only the second year of Sony and Nintendo’s existence. Are we just amusing ourselves by trying to declare a winner and loser while the customers are still out there deciding?

For Sony, however, reaching 100 million units is probably what it intends to do, as previous press releases hinted that the company was more focused on competing with itself – with the PlayStation 2’s successes one generation ago.

The Xbox 360 has two more years to reach that goal, while the later rendition from Nintendo would have a little more than three years. Sony’s PlayStation 3 intends to last as long as 10 years.