ive noticed the opposite nov-dec hard to get kenicts and 360 i havent even seen a kenict in store during that time

now i can easily find kinect stand alone and the 360 consoles

Well Aaron Greenberg did tweet this on December 20th.

RT @majornelson: We are aware #Kinect and consoles are out of stock in some places. The team is working hard to get stores restocked ASAP.
1:30 PM Dec 20th, 2010 via TweetDeck

Since Greenberg was reffering to NPD he was talking about the U.S.

Not to mention that still having to produce different units for PAL and NTSC markets, there's a logistic problem, that surplus in a region can't be redirected to another suffering from shortages unless they use the same TV standard. This problem will end only when all the biggest markets will complete the switch to digital terrestrial TV (about time).

BTW to offer a bit of insight into the comment about shortages in January and February, I think this might help:

http://gamrconnect.vgchartz.com/thread.php?id=116030&page=1

Yep, I read the title and I overlooked the small NPD bit.

Anyhow, at MediaWorld I saw no consoles selling, neither MS, nor Sony, nor Nintendo, but looking better, I understood why: despite already being in clearance sales period, they all were full priced, I guess before Xmas sales were so good that some retailers thought they could get away with greed. Kinect could be even more affected, as they price it full now, while just before Xmas they discounted it by 20 euros for some days.

No doubt there were going to be some shortages. So we can expect some shortages for Jan & Feb months. At least it's after the holidays. Microsoft needs to get their manufacturers moving. Start getting stock ready for 2011 holiday.

dont know why this type of new comes out days b4 NPD numbers during all of Dec and Nov i never saw any articles bout 360 stock levels

why would it take till march?

i know the same thing happened to ps3 last year and it took till like may for it to get fixed but they had an excuse the older 2001 ps3 slims were phased out for the newer 2100 that has smaller RSXs that arrived WW around may thats why Jan-april sales were a little low and ps3 were hard to get during that time period

wonder what if anything is happining with the 360

oh EDIT thanks postoffice for that link to bad noone cared bout your findings at that time

Its very possible, in fact PS3 outsold 360 this week. Could be due to shortages.

Sounds like a rookie mistake...Running out of systems during the biggest shopping season of the yr.... I guess their decision to kill off the older model of the system is probably what did it.  There has been high demand for the Xbox Slim ever since it's launch.  Probably didn't have enough time to raise the stock levels of that system.  Esp. when they bundled it with the Kinect.

MS may have missed a golden oppertunity to build upon what was started with the sales shift.  It will be intresting to see if they can rebound.