At this point I am certain that MS is up to something... I went to 3 different "big box" stores looking for quality DVC tapes and while there looked in the games section (as always).  PS3 40s in stock at all three.  NO 360s in stock -- arcade, elite, halo, or anything else -- at any of the stores.  No Wiis, either, but the whole scarcity of 360s is definitely a planned event.   GDC 2008 has come and gone with no substantial announcement.  What is Microsoft planning?  They have never been able to keep a secret...  Pictures of the Elite showed up from "spies" LONG before it hit the street.  All I can assume is that they are going to price drop and possibly create new bundles and they want to be SURE the channel is almost completely clear of old models to avoid confusion with new SKUs.  It would certainly make sense to get the channel clear and go another 30 days to get past the flood of "returns" that would come back after such a move.

Perhaps they have some solid data on the most recent hardware and are making a couple more interim tweaks... Falcon II or something before they go full 65nm on both main chips... 

Who knows,  but MS is most certainly up to something....

They need to hurry the hell up and show us their cards LOL.

I think they were planning on a unit with a HD-DVD built in and scrapped that... and who knows what they are going to do instead...

^ lol.

im still calling shenanigans on the whole "supply constraint" on the 360....seeing how they are in almost every gamestop and best buy ive been to...not to mention, theyre quite abundant online also

Not in my area, Wal-mart has been out of 360 for weeks (even the Arcade, which I noticed always sold well at Wal-mart).  Even our small Best Buy were out of the Pro & Elite for a long time.   My corner store FM (Fred Meyer) were out of Pro and Elite since Christmas.  They would get 1 or 2 Pro in and they would be sold.

What I do notice though is PS3 which hardly sold at our local FM store is now selling.  80gb is gone now (it has been there since before Christmas) and even all the Spider-man3 are all sold.  They have the new 40gb without Spider-man bundle and doing a big promotion on Blu-ray.

I even notice the game for PS3 are moving as well (still not as good as 360) but they are selling.

If this is a calculate move on MS part then I hope for their sake that they have something up their sleeves but if not they just give PS3 the opportunity it need to break out of the 3rd place in the US.

Couple of thing I find interesting, the gamestop I went to the manager told me several weeks ago there won't be new sku for PS3 but a different bundle for 80gb to replace Motorstorm bundle.   So I guess that's the new MGS4 bundle rumor. (No 120gb then?).  Another interesting thing is my FM store have clear out all the 20gb harddrive. I am not sure if they decided to just not stock this particular one and only want to keep 120gb or something is up and may be MS is combining Elite and Pro to a new sku?

I think they really need to do away with the Elite and just make one sku.  There are really not much incentive to get Elite aside from the 120gb HD.  (I have mine since May of last year and it still have or 90gb left...)

Considering MS said they had sold 17.7million consoles by December31 and we have them at 17.22million, that would place about 480k at stores, and that is assuming that they have shipped zero units this year. That sure is a big supply constraint

Edit: I just checked Future shop online, its like best buy, and they have all models in stock except for the arcade, they also still have the christmas holiday bundle in stock. 

they've sold 18 million, I think vgchartz messed up.
they even announced it.