Microsoft Corp said on Thursday it hoped its Xbox video game console, the software giant's debut in the $20 billion global games market, would sell 1.5 million units in its first three months in Europe. Competing against Nintendo's GameCube and Sony's PlayStation 2, the Xbox is due to be launched in Europe on March 14. ``We are capable of building 1.5 million units for the launch and we'd be very, very happy to sell all of those,'' said Sandy Duncan, Microsoft's Vice-President for Xbox in Europe, the Middle East and Africa. ``The indications from the United States (Xbox) launch are that that may not be a widely optimistic estimate,'' he told Reuters at the opening of one of the new product's main manufacturing plants in western Hungary. Xbox launched in the U.S. on November 15. Duncan said the launch price for the Xbox in Europe would be around $426, in line with the price of Sony's PlayStation 2 at its launch 18 months ago. Singapore-based electronics manufacturer Flextronics International Ltd is building the Xbox at Sarvar, near Hungary's border with Austria, and at a plant in Mexico. The Sarvar plant is scheduled to provide around 43 percent of worldwide Xbox output.