This isn't how retail and logistics work, and this is coming from someone who has managed at two of the retailers you listed.

MS and Sony both can control what stores get what units. If they see a Walmart in the middle of nowhere in Texas, they can decide to not ship that store any units and instead focus on bigger cities with higher demand. Same as Gamestop or Target or Best Buy. After that though, once the product is on its way to those retailers distribution centers, all control is out of MS's hands. In order for your idea to work, MS would need a way to have up to the minute inventory data for these stores. That doesn't exist. None of these stores even provide up to date information for their own use, let alone for a supplier.

Lets take Walmart for example. MS might be able to say hey, lets ship 4 consoles to this store, we did get data from last week and they sold out fast. Ok, so they ship 4 consoles to the distribution center for that area. That ends any control they have. They have no way to control how long it takes for that product to be accounted for and sorted at the DC. Then it has to be loaded onto the truck, which again, they have no control of. That truck then has to be driven to the store, which is out of MS's hands. Once at the store, that truck might be unloaded that day, or it might be the next, or even the next day. MS has no control on that. Once unloaded, does MS control whether the product goes right to the sales floor or not? No. So they have no way of being able to say "its sold out at Walmart, Gamestop, Best Buy, etc". What you are proposing they say is actually way more vague than what they actually said.

Have you tried to search for one of these consoles online? Walmart and BB last I checked, don't even allow you to. Gamestop and Target still do, but the results are not accurate. If these retailers cannot even provide accurate information for their own website, how do you expect MS or Sony to have accurate information? And what do you think would happen as soon as MS released a statement saying hey, Best Buy store 532 in whatever city has X amount of consoles available? That store is going to be hammered with calls and people coming in looking for it and in reality they're either already sold or will last maybe an hour. And what if they actually say "hey guys Walmart and Best Buy are both completely sold out! look elsewhere"? Well then some Walmart in some random city in some random state is going to have freight brought out to the floor and low and behold theres 4 Xbones. Then someone snaps a picture and suddenly MS is lying and blah blah. Not only that but if MS says they have none at Walmarts, then that means most people won't even try there when in reality lots of stores probably will get some that day. Do you really think any of these retailers want MS or Sony steering customers away from them with inaccurate inventory information?

They made a simple comment, that they are sold out at retailers around the world. It's a very simple comment and it's the truth. It's adorable watching people try to twist it into a negative though.

I'll edit my comment and address the rest later, but as for the bold:

 It's not being twisted into a negative. MS is saying they're sold out at retailers around the world. Retailers around the world are saying "no, we're not". There's no need to twist a demonstrably false statement into a negative. If they would have said something like "we're having trouble keeping up with demand" or "we've sold out in many places" then that is vague enough that it gets the point across and can't be spun in anyway, positive or negative. But to say "we're sold out at retailers around the world", which implies that they are just sold out, period (you can play semantics if you want to by calling it merely  "a simple statement") and these retailers respond with "no", that's akin to saying I'm naked when I clearly have clothes on 

OK so can you show me where "Retailers around the world are saying 'no, we're not"?  One clerk at a store does not a retailer make.  They have no way of knowing if they are sold out at every store everywhere. Do you claim they are lying if they say it and someone returns an X1 to a retailer and the clerk says look we have an X1?  

XBO was still rushed, and there were still issues in manufacturing (specifically the processors), but I agree XBO won't be as bad.

As for that $1,000,000,000 spend to fix issues, it was such bullshit. I got an extended warrenty on my 360, knowing it would break, and MS extended their warrenty to 3 years, and forced a factory recall on RRoD models. So when my system RRoD'd, I wasn't able to get a new model immediatly, I had to deal with Microsoft, which on probably at least 5 or 6 occurances, wouldn't admit my X-Box was broken. When they finally did admit it was broken, they sent me another broken model it replace it.

I had to b***h so much on the phone for them to replace my console with a new one, how is that service? When they finally did replace that system, the new one broke within a year, and since my warrenty was nearly expired, they wouldn't admit to the new system being broken.

I got real lucky, despite my Best Buy Warrenty being expired, the guy on the floor was real nice, and gave me a new console for free. An Arcade model, but still I got to keep my hard drive and I got a 3rd controller by accident.

Now my 4th 360 is breaking, and I have one of the more reliable HDMI fat models too, so.....I dunno about XBO. I'm expecting it to be as reliable as my 4th X-Box, which to be fair has given me 3 years so far, which is much better then the 1 year original 360's gave, but....3 years isn't enough. I'm still concerned about XBO quality, that's one big reason I'm going PS4.

Think I'm pretty much boycotting US products where I can, I'm sick of Apple phones breaking, XB consoles breaking, US cars dying prematurely, Dell Computers falling apart after only a few years, etc, etc.

Well, if you read the OP: Likewise when contacting a Target store in Folsom, California.  While a store employee said he sold his store's last Xbox One earlier in the day, he was able to confirm that no fewer than two other Northern California Target locations had them in stock with the El Dorado Hills store showing eight units in stock and the store in Lincoln, California, with ten.

not to mention, when photos like ---> http://imgur.com/gallery/X3m4uW0 and http://tinyurl.com/ljsd2yw are all over the internet from hours or days after the console launched, it leads one to believe "retailers around the world are saying 'no we're not'", not to mention that's what the article's title is anyway. 

And no, I don't believe that if an XBone sells and the buyer returns it, MS is then lying. I mean, the thing sold and that's what the retailer, then, reported. But when there's literal piles in several stores in several markets, as evidenced by easily accessible photographic proof, you can then extrapolate (much like how VGC extrapolates its data from small samples to get 95% accurate numbers). It no longer becomes "one clerk at a store". It becomes "there are several instances of the XBone being in stock, it's not an outlier"

So you have these couple of pictures with no context. They could have been hours or days before the launch event. You also say they were hours or days after launch and this article and the quote from MS is from this week.  So what if they were hours or even days after the launch.  That was like 2 weeks prior to the article.  I mean look at one of those pictures is a pallet with the pallet jack still in it. They literlly didnt have time to pull the jack away and the pile was what 1/4 full.  Its like the retailer said dont bother pulling the jack out let them all sell off then take the pallet and all back to receiving.  Look how dark the other picture is. Looks to me like the store isnt even open yet.

How is a clerk that takes a phone call supposed to know when he walks back to the department that the customer service took in a return an hour or 10 minutes ago. All he/she knows is there is a unit on the shelf.  

You can extrapolate what you want, but so can we by looking at sites that track availability, by going to retailers sites that allow you to check stores for inventory and see that wow they dont have any to sell that the X1 is in a sold out status.

The first picture was from after launch, even though MS said they sold out when they launched. Then they'd do what they could to resupply. That second pic is another pile that was set up before Black Friday. It may be Black Friday, but that's a rather large pile for just one store when they're "just able to meet demand" and need to put units in other stores. So there's your context of those particular two pictures

And there are more like it all over the internet if you took a second to google it. I even saw one posted here from a user from a week after launched and there were rows upon rows stack on each other at a store a VGC user went to. I wish I could find that post, or at least the thread with the picture in it, And getting into the semantics of the pictures, the one that's still on the jack....have you never been to a big box department store? When they expect a product to just fly off the shelf, they don't actually put it on a shelf (since those only house like 5 or 6 units). They put it on a jack, a pallet, in a cart, etc to have as many out and as accessible as possible. And the other picture is dark? It's indoors, so that's just the lighting....and there's a kid on the left side browsing.

And yea, you can go to sites that track availability. Here, I did you one better. Amazon in stock,  so tell all your buddies that want to get one (and this is after Black Friday and Cyber Monday as well). You see, I too am up to date with tracking sites (thank you Zoolerts and Wiilerts). I'm not just pulling this out of my ass

edit: I took a screenshot of me making this here edit, showing the XBone in stock, just as a precaution, in case you think I'm BSing about them being in stock

The adorable part about this is the bolded thing is what they did say. You're simply twsiting it to mean something else so that a negative can be applied to it. Whether they say they are sold out at retailers around the world or "sold out in many places", you're going to have pictures floating of consoles in stock, which will be seen as a contradiction to the people looking for their agenda to push. In simpler terms, haters gonna hate.

"we're sold out at retailers around the world" simply means they are sold out at retailers around the world. So they found a Target with one in stock for the article. Does that change the fact that if I look at any in my area, they are sold out? Same with Gamestop, or Toys R Us. If you have 10 Gamestops in the world and 9 are sold out, is it deceitful or misleading or lying to say you're "sold out at Gamestops around the world"? No. But if you say "we're sold out at every Gamestop around the world", then that can be misleading.

Don't blame MS because you cannot understand a simple comment about supply, even if you have a fairy tale wish about how they can keep track of inventory and logistics.

So what you're trying to defend is basically "we're sold out, but we're not sold out"? You're playing around with semantics. I'm not trying to spin anything negatively. "Retailers" implies the whole chain. As in, "you can't find Xbox Ones at Walmart right now". If he would have said "we're sold out at many Walmarts around the world", that leaves room for assuming that not all the Walmarts are sold out. But when you make the blanket statement "we're sold out at Retailer X", that means they're sold out at that retailer.

And what you're not realizing is that it's so much more than just "they found a Target with one unit". Something like that can fly under the radar. But when there are several pics of Gamestops, Best Buys, Walmarts, Targets, etc. floating around (and I'm only referring to pics in this instance because it's photographic evidence), with walls just lined with XBones, that's not agenda pushing. That's telling like it is. They aren't sold out at the retailers they are claiming to be sold out at! "We're sold out at many Walmarts". I find a pile at multiple Walmarts. Ok, those stores aren't amongst the "many". "We're sold out at Walmart", I find a pile at multiple Walmarts. Ok, you're not sold out at Walmart.

And if all they were saying is "we've sold out in many places", as you think that's all they're saying, then they'd tell us where they aren't sold out at.

I'm not misunderstanding simple comments. I'm not trying to spin things negatively. I'm not pushing an agenda. All I'm saying is "we're sold out at retailers around the world" is a false statement, or at the very least, a deceitful one. Otherwise, all it takes is two stores in two different countries to sell out, and bam, "we're sold out around the world"

Just gonna cut the rest of the post off and not read/respond to it, because you're already wrong enough right there. I am not defending anything, I am simply trying to educate you so that you don't confuse yourself in the future.

Secondly, not only am I not the one playing with semantics, I am actually just trying to logically explain to you why the semantics you are creating, are just adorable and wrong.

Lastly, "retailers" does not imply the whole chain. Because that would be stupid for anyone to claim an entire retailer is sold out. There are 4 Walmarts within 15 minutes driving distance of my house alone. To any supplier, that's 4 different retailers, not one, because each store is different, has different demands and sometimes prices, and has a different representative. Again, it's simple logistics.

Education is complete, you're welcome. Please apply what you have learned wisely, have a good day.