Madskillz that "shaved off a couple units of blah lead" excuse is getting old. Yeah they shaved a couple off each week which has added to almost half a mil already. Less than 2 months into the year I find that pretty concerning on MS' side.

Starcraft - MS didn't experience a serious burst of high demand. MS console isn't hard to manufacture. They don't even need to look at Japan and only need to slightly look at Europe(just throw them a bone once in a while) It's been out for three years. They should know what to expect. They haven't stated a reasonable explanation of why they are getting shortages.

Untill someone clarifies why I'll still call BS.

They tried once but then the ipod happened. Needless to say Microsoft decided never to be caught off guard again. 

They have to be up to something. The "We forgot to make enough" excuse is kinda lame, especially since they are not selling that much more than last year. Hopefully, it is a redesigned RROD-less version.

I wonder if they were busy upgrading some production lines to the rumored built-in HD-DVD drive. Kinda a little late for that now.

Since the Wii has shortages and it is selling great, guess all the Xbots had to jump on the bandwagon and claim to have shortages as well to save face for getting beat by an overpriced blu-ray player with no games. Yea makes sense.

It boils down to one thing - MS creating demand. Plan and simple.

Im guessing they stopped production of their old models, because they finally figured out a way to make
models that arent affected by the RROD problem. though thats just a wild guess, I dont think MS would try to create demand by shortages for a product that has been out in the market for this long.

@pooper scooper

Given your tendency to ignore logic (gamers and retailers called shortages LONG BEFORE MS for the THIRD time), I'll stop trying to convince you of anything and leave you to 'keep calling bs' in your corner.

Wiistation360 might be onto something with the RRod, but at the same time something has to happen soon for MS, so it is just as likely a new bundle, or a new model to respond to the rumours of a 57th upgrade of the PS3 SKU's.

To starcraft,
Possible,
it makes sense
I suppose GDC will help

To madskillz,
so you assume MS is not enought resplenish stock TO create the demand ?
Considering how the PS3 "close" in term of content/price of the Xbox360, it is a dangerouns way to follow ...

i personally think, as someone above said that MS havnt made a profit especially with so many going faulty, they must be trying to sort out what is going wrong and fixing it, so as to not keep getting the problem, and maybe with the re-design it has messed up production lines slowing it down abit,




or maybe they ran out of money and are about to go bankrupt