Lol, it's BS from MS.
They were probably gonna bring an SKU w/ an integrated HD-DVD drive to market, to try to stem the hemorrhaging of money the HD-DVD camp was going to suffer if it lost to Sony's Blu-Ray (there's the obvious royalty loss for Toshiba, while MS would fail in its bid Trojan-horse its codecs into people's living rooms - something Sun, Apple, HP, IBM, Sony, and others all wanted to stop).
But, HD-DVD was put in its grave too early by the several-industry-wide Blu-Ray Disc Association, and MS was caught with its pants down. Ass toward the Blu-Ray Disc Association and the PS3.
Light-hearted theory concludes: the shortage of 360s is the delay in salvaging/reconfiguring the units into normal Premiums, Elites, whatever.
At any rate and in all seriousness, a terrible blunder for MS *IF* there actually was a significant shortage and it cost them sales.
