I remember last year with the leaked PS3 slim production photos coming out in March or so, yet the Slim itself came out in September and that was supply constrained throughout the holidays. Sony had at least 9 months worth of production and still couldn't come out with enough consoles in the end to satisfy all the demand from one quarter of sales. Thats my precedent.

Now the Xbox 360 is coming out in June, but I don't believe that Microsoft are any more prepared for this launch than Sony was in September last year with their respective revision. To sell another 6M consoles from here or so, they will need to produce an average of 300,000 consoles a week to satisfy demand. Thats a pretty tough ask, but I suspect its doable. Thats more than they have released onto the market thus far if you go by the average rate the revision consoles are selling at. I don't think they could supply 10M or 8M consoles.

Kinect is coming out in November, however compared to Move or the Wiimote its probably taking quite a few more steps to produce. It is a far more complicated product than Move because it comes with 10 bit camera sensors which AFAIK aren't produced in high numbers already and it contains a mechanical motor which means that every Kinect accessory will also require much more testing before it leaves the factory. I don't think they will have produced enough of these to satisfy demand even at the higher price point unless Kinect totally bombs. However I will assume it'll sell a few million or so based off reasonably strong pre-orders and Microsofts big marketing push.

 If they were to price the base console lower or the price of the Kinect camera itself lower as either one would probably lower the cost of the bundled Arcade it would increase demand and I believe they couldn't sell any more even if they wanted to. So coming in at a lower price would probably be counter-productive in terms of overall revenue and therefore would lower the profit they could attain. I also believe that the fact that the Arcade is coming with a 4GB (32Gbit) flash module also supports this theory, as they are currently the highest capacity flash chips in mass production and therefore the most expensive. If they had intended a price cut they would have used a much cheaper 1GB chip most likely.

No, I don't think so. The Slim was only 40% of X360 sales in the USA in June if you go by NPD. Granted, that was in two weeks, but even so they can meet that demand especially since the Euro / Americas / Japan Slim launches were spaced out. They're only going to need 3-4m Kinects for 2010 at what they're pricing and bundling it for and odds are they're already manufacturing the things.

You can roughly tell when the Slim demand is expected to run out by the introduction of the new Arcade models. They're coming in August - Aug 3 in the USA and Aug 20 in Europe. You can take that as roughly when the Slim boost will run out since it wasn't accompanied by a permanent price drop. So they'll ride those models for a bit, then Halo, then Kinect and Call of Duty, possibly with a price drop in there somewhere.

Price Drop ? Not Hapening... this year only next!

I don't think the Kinects themselves are cheap or easy to manufacture. It has a 10bit camera sensor and they are typically only really used with robotics, so effectively 3-4M Kinects might represent a doubling or trippling of the typical production of that sensor class. I don't think they are releasing them in November because they believe an extra month of development would significantly improve its performance once people get their hands on them as they are already demoing the product at various locations in the wild. If they could sell more of them, they would probably release them sooner.

As for the revision console itself. I don't really believe they would have enough supply to cover more than 5-6M consoles sold in Q3/Q4 2010 or thereabout. Kinect doesn't appear to be as ready for prime time as the PS3 slim was in September given the lack of supply and the need for staggered launches. I therefore don't believe they would cut the price even though they likely could if they were so inclined. They can probably supply about what the market needs at $200 and $300 and $300 respectively. But if they were to cut the prices to $149, $249 and $249 respectively the short term sales increase would be too much to handle as they couldn't supply the short term boost or the big sales weeks in December.

I really hope that supply constraints are Microsoft's excuse for not cutting the price of the X360 this year.