Microsoft adds Xbox Games, may cut price
By Bloomberg |
SEATTLE: Microsoft Corp. has won over 20-year-old gamers, who spend hours a day launching rockets and firing plasma guns on the company's Xbox 360. Now it wants their moms.
To lure them, the world's largest software maker says it plans to add more family games and redo retail displays to make the children's titles easier to find. It also may cut the Xbox price, which is as high as 399 dollar, analysts say.
Microsoft is emulating rival Nintendo Co. The Japanese company's Wii console outsells the Xbox 360 in the US by appealing to women, children and the elderly, a strategy Microsoft says it needs to adopt to win a broader audience than the first Xbox attracted.
"If we don't make that move, make it early and expand our demographic, we will wind up in the same place as with Xbox 1, a solid business with 25 million people," said a vice president who oversees the Xbox. "What I need is a solid business with 90 million people."
Microsoft loses money on every Xbox it sells, said UBS AG analyst Heather Bellini in New York. In the fiscal year that ended June 30, the unit that sells the console lost 1.26 billion dollar on sales of 4.26 billion dollar.
Microsoft says the division, which accounted for 9.6 per cent of total sales last year, will be profitable in the year that starts July 1.
That may mean a price cut heading into the holiday season to spur sales of games, which do make a profit.
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