In NA,

80% of the sales of Xbox360 are PREMIUM (+Elite ? see below)

45% of the sales of PS3 are 80gb/60gb (hard to find)

In the mind of the people the real Xbox360 offer is premium and the real PS3 offer is 80gb.

(sorry dont find the link ...)

EDIT, The source (lol) :

-         80-gig PS3 sales still account for up to ~45% of PS3 sales, despite the introduction of the cheaper ($400) 40-gig model, and occasional availability of the older model(s) (mainly the 60 gig PS3).

-         In contrast, the Xbox 360 bundles that include Forza 2 and Marvel: Unlimited Alliance account for up to 80% of the Xbox 360 models sold in the Americas last week

==> so, is the elite bundled with 2 games too (forzza+marvel) ????

Yes, the Elite is bundled with the same games the Pro/Premium Bundle is.

I do think it's wierd to see how the various user SKU preferences are. Even though everyone's maligned MS and Sony for their SKUs, I do think it adds alot of user-defined value in what's bought.

Not a big fan of the 40gb non-BC model of the PS3, but at $400, it's a steal!


SKUs are the greatest thing this gen. Some hate it, because models are gimped, but when you work out a cheapo solution (see Arcade).

Sorry if my post is misunderstood.  I'm assuming BOTH actually -- demand for them exceeds supply and therefore MS hasn't shipped enough consoles to meet demand.  The demand is a great thing.  I am just wondering how much of a hit the sales number has/will take assuming there are spot shortages here and there.

Strangely I've seen REALLY low stock of Xbox 360's at most places I've visite as well. I was "thinking" of maybe getting an HDMI Elite sometime this Xmas since I'm having problems with the Component video, however I can't seem to easily find one.

Amazon has been sold out of the Elite for some time now, I wonder why Microsoft is suddenly having supply problems? Maybe a bit of a crunch from moving to the new version?

I actually "converted" the majority of my friends to the 360 around when Halo 3 came out, but there are a couple more looking at the Pro pack.

I'm surprised that MS took so long to figure out out that Core+Price Drop+Wireless Controller+Memory Card+HDMI=Sales.

Sheesh. The Core was a POS and it cost them very little to add some functionality to the damned thing, making it a viable alternative to the Pro for $70 less.

Yeah I agree that the channel stuffing really hurt their credintials with reatilers. I think most figured that they would sell hte same as last year. Wrong.

Also I wonder how fast they have been able to crank out the new die-shrink 65nm cpu. Maybe that is the bottleneck. My guess is this was jsut a Black Friday snafu and will be rectified shortly.

dschumm, I don't know if it's channel stuffing, but an inability for distributors to ship units to the retailers.

As of the September MS report, 13.3m (or so) Xbox 360's were shipped to distributors. That represented, at the time, around a 1m stop-gap of units.

And to compound the problem, Microsoft probably only went with historical sales numbers when producing the Arcade model. If 10% were Cores, Microsoft probably figured, at max, 15% might need made. If that's the case, they might of only had 100-150k Arcades in the wild, while demand must be alot higher.