Microsoft E3 conference speaker: "...and that's our new console everyone. We have just one more thing before we close tonight. One more guest. A very special guest tonight. Everybody give a grand welcome to Oprah!!!!!"

Oprah: "Everyone check under your seats"

I initially thought no, but that is actually a good point, especially if the 3rd party are involved and ready for launch.

With digital distribution, they could ship easy to sell cards to the retailers that were then vouchers for games.  So they keep the retailers happy, and have instant mass shipping of games.

I think that will happen.  Where it will happen on this upcoming gen, I think not.  But I can see a day where someone announces a system, and within a very short time period everyone is downloading games very quickly.

Microsoft tends to take risk, and do things in an unorthodox way.        

PS As far as the RROD, it surprises me that people forget in 2010 they launch an updated console, that hit stores the next day, and has had greater reliability and many of it’s competitors.

If the Sun said it, it must be true?

Your best point.

There are four games that I want this year: South Park, Beyon, The last of us and GTA5.

The thing is, while these first three will sell a couple of million units each, GTA5 will sell probably 20 million on both consoles (PS3 and Xbox360). Such a massive game will indeed steal the thunder out of pretty much anything.

It's not one point that makes the argument, it's a pie chart of small reasons like hurdles that results in decreasing week over week sales, culminating in a brand new fully hyped system release.

You can't compare launching a slim model with a launch of a brand new console. for a new console  the less rushed it is the the better and that's because no matter whats gone before it's a new product and every launch comes with it's own set of teething problems ranging from the small to RROD something I'm sure MS would not like to see  repeated and blamed on a premature launch .  as to the 360 slim  it had been in the design phase for quite sometime and  when they where ready to change over to the newer design MS simply made sure there was enough old stock in the supply chain to do them till production was at optimum numbers and since it was just an update to an existing product nothing much had to change the retailers new about the pricing and design beforehand all they had to do was order as usual .

btw I would like a link for your reliability claim versus it's competitors .

Good point, it makes a lot of sense.

About the failure rates of Xbox360, it will probabley never happen again, Miicrosoft surelly took to heart the bitter lesson that teached them and will not release another faulty hardware. By the way, I have a Xbox360 jasper and a PS3 slim, both 3 years old and never gave me any trouble.

Sega isnt MS

They need at least 3 months of production time to have a bear minimum launch.

Sooooo they would have to start in March. Doubt it.