Analyst predicts 2.5 mil Xbox 360s sold this year

By Ross Miller

Wedbush Morgan Securities (WMS) has given their two cents on hardware sales for the final three months of this year. WMS is predicting that the year-end hardware sales for the PS2 will total 12.2 million, the Xbox 5.1 million, the GameCube 2.7 million, and Microsoft's upcoming Xbox 360 a whopping 2.5 million. The Xbox 360 figure is based on an assumption that Microsoft began production of the console in mid-august, at a rate of 100,000 per week, and later increasing production rates to 150,000 a week – which is to say, of all 2.5 million console estimated to be produced, every single one of them will be sold.

Is this a valid assumption, or might WMS be overestimating the US and European markets?

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