Last time around, in the last six weeks of 2001, Microsoft sold 1.4 million original Xboxes in the U.S. market. This time, it sold 607,000 Xbox 360s in the U.S. On top of that, it sold about 300,000 units in Europe and about 100,000 units in Japan, according to analyst Michael Pachter at Wedbush Morgan. In 2001, production began a few days before Sept. 21, when Microsoft announced the first of its factories began making machines. So, the two factories made on average about 100,000 original Xboxes a week in 2001. This time around, two factories owned by Flextronics and Wistron started production sometime during the fall and managed to ship about 1 million units.
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