Microsoft Delays Xbox One Week

After insisting its much-hyped Xbox gaming console would ship as scheduled in early November, Microsoft has extended the wait in the United States by one week.

Hours after confirming that it would meet expectations for shipping 600,000 to 800,000 Xbox video game console in time for the U.S. launch, Microsoft pushed that release date back from November 8 to November 15.

The extension is due to "a number of strategic factors" that have surfaced in the past week, a company spokesperson says. Although Microsoft will not give details about the delay, representatives say contract manufacturing company Flextronics International began manufacturing the devices at a plant in Guadalajara, Mexico, on Friday.

Another Flextronics plant in Hungary will also start producing Xbox consoles following the launch, says P.J. McNealy, a video game and hardware analyst with research firm Gartner.

Eyeing Nintendo

Microsoft says it still plans to ship between 1 million and 1.5 million of the high-powered, 128-bit game consoles to U.S. consumers by the end of the year. The company says it plans to do that by shipping more than 100,000 units each week following the launch.

The news of the U.S. delay follows an announcement in August that Microsoft would delay the release of the Xbox in Japan in order to ensure enough units in the United States.

"Unit numbers will remain the same at launch. We had previously said there will be between 600,000 and 800,000 consoles ready for November 8...there are no changes in those unit numbers," says a Microsoft spokesperson in the UK.

Microsoft, which is seeking to take a piece of the lucrative home video gaming market from Sony Computer Entertainment, Sega, and Nintendo of America, had announced in May that is was unveiling the Xbox in early November at a price of $299.

At the time, Robbie Bach, senior vice president of the games division and chief Xbox officer at Microsoft, estimated the company would sell around 1.5 million consoles during the holiday season.

Just last month, Microsoft announced that in order to focus its efforts on satisfying consumer demand in the United States, it would delay the launch of its Xbox games console in Japan until February 22, 2002. Microsoft said it had decided to devote its full production capacity to the U.S. market.

Around the World

Microsoft will be launching the Xbox in Europe in the first quarter of 2002, though no date has been set, the UK spokesperson says.

In a report published in Friday's edition of the Financial Times newspaper, Microsoft is quoted as conceding that it has concerns there may be a shortage of its Xbox games consoles at launch and that it now does not know how many consoles it will have ready for market on November 8.

"We won't know day-one quantities until we reach peak production," the newspaper quotes a Microsoft spokesperson as saying.

Microsoft has hired Singapore-based contract manufacturing company Flextronics International to produce the Xbox in factories in Guadalajara, Mexico and in Hungary.

"The U.S. consoles are being produced in the plant in Mexico while the European Xboxes will be made in Hungary, and everything is on schedule. I don't know where those other reports are coming from," the Microsoft spokesperson says.

A spokesperson from Flextronics in Vienna was unable to comment. "Yes, I have read the same reports but I can't make a comment on that. We're under strict NDA [nondisclosure agreement] with Microsoft," says Flextronics spokesperson Cheryl Scritchfield.