Woah - lot's of arguing here.

Clearly the 360s has sold out or is on low stock in lots of places in the UK.  Clearly it's also still available in some, too.

It's very rare for something to sell out everywhere and clearly the 360s hasn't, but there's no denying demand has been strong in the UK and that a lot of places are out of stock.

What's so hard to agree there?

Personally, I'm more curious about how in the UK the clearance sale of older models seemed to have no demand vs the 360s as compared to the US where the clearance models where snapped up.

As I see it this means either/or:

1 - in UK RROD has really been holding back demand and people who were waiting for a 'reliable' 360 weren't going to be tempted by a cheaper older model no matter what

2 - the opposite of the above and that the baseline demand hasn't changed much - indicated by the lack of uptake on the old model being cheaper - but a lot of UK 360 owners are upgrading (HHD transfer kits seem to have spiked too which lends some weight to this)

3 - a combination of the two (which is what I think personally)

As I see it what we're seeing right now is a big spike composed of three factors:

1 - normal demand - clearly this wasn't going to change to the average weekly demand has sold as normal

2 - existing owners getting the new model - clearly a fairly high percentage (not absolute by any means, just in relation to other consoles) of existing owners are upgrading on the basis of better spec, quieter, better HDD size and perception of big jump in reliability.  I suspect the new model being better suited to Kinect is also getting some existing owners to upgrade

3 - new demand that has been generated by the better spec and perception of a much more reliable 360.  This may also contain some early Kinect interest as well

The big question is how the dust will settle, particularly when the surge of upgrading dies down and we get a better view of how much extra baseline demand the new model has really generated.

The xbox was always huge in the uk

hehe big slap in the face for those who claimed the ps3 would over take the x360 by the holidays

Good points and good question.

I'd have another question: could 360S huge early adoption, followed by 360s Arcade and Kinect partially spoil its next Xmas like the huge spike for Halo 3, followed by an even bigger BF, did? After all, only three people in the world, two on this site and the third is Ballmer, will buy multiple 360S at each major MS launch to avoid contributing to spoil any of them...    

Amazon has now sold out next replen due on the 28th. It will be interesting to see how Microsoft keep up with the demand being high in both the US and EU.

Of course the problem with the sold out is like the original launch, I am sure some retailers are getting much higher volumes and preferential replens. Companies like Amazon you would imagine would be in this category. I am still suprised how long Amazon had them in stock considering how supply constrained the model was and how popular Amazon is in the UK.

Absolutely perfect