So what your saying is because of Xmas 2006, they were not capable of producing 300,000 consoles in December to ship in January, or maybe even Feb?

 Its not like they got to December and said "WHOO! That was hard, lets shut down production completely and have a nice break!"

or

"Damn that was hard, lets give our entire factory a break for the month of January except Steve and Joe (he clearly hates those guys) so they can only produce 100,000 for the entire month of January so we can ship them Feb."

 You explained a sob story, but not why they would have huge shortages even existing in the end of January and February.

On top of that, THEY WERE IN STORES EVERYWHERE! You can either look at the facts, or make elaborate stories for why Microsoft wasn't ready to have 300,000 consoles in the month of January, and still not restocked by Feb. This is ridiculous...

The Chinese do that all by themselves. They don't need MS to tell them to take off nearly the entire month of January.

Shortages are caused by selling more than you can produce right? And usually if there is a shortage, its widespread and you wont find places with none and others with full racks and more in the back.

It would take 30,000 people going in stores throughout the month and not finding and console, then having those same 30,000 people not wanting to go online and order it, since it was available online.

Face it THERE WAS NOT A SHORTAGE. Maybe lower inventory than last year, but it was not SOLD OUT. Not even close, except for MAYBE the elite. Most likely not in January, DEFINITELY NOT IN FEB.

No, they weren't. Did you check inventories in January? I did. Twice. Out of the four major retailers I checked (Target, Circuit City, Walmart, and Best Buy), the 360 was roughly 80-90% sold out in January.

Couple that with a moderator on this site who stated that his retail chain couldn't get 360s for a month or so and you've got yourself a pretty solid case for a shortage.

BTW, it's a pretty good indication that there is a shortage when people are complaining that they can't find a 360 weeks before MS said a damned thing about this. I visit an American-centric forum and from the first week of January to the beginning of February, people were randomly popping online to mention how irritated they were that they couldn't find a 360 to buy in their area. MS hadn't said anything about a shortage before that point. Checking online inventories only backed up these peoples' claims that 360s were hard to find. 

Again, I checked to see if there was a shortage because initially, I thought it was incomprehensible that MS underproduced the console for the holidays.

Answer one question: Did you check status to see if there was a shortage? If not, why are you refuting loads of evidence that shows there was a shortage in January? 

Im pretty sure if they did that, Dave Chapelle would burn their feet, right after he was done cooking eggs.

 Sure there were shortages of some 360 SKUs (I saw Elite shortages around here). But the same is truth for the 80Gb PS3, the top of the line PS3 has also been hard to find since late January, even online.

 Anyway, it really does not matter, soon MS will need a new excuse since the PS3 will beat the 360 again in March lol

I guarantee you that the Chinese New Year is very, very real and that nearly the entire country shuts down for a few weeks in January.

I've been checking ever since the year started. I'm kinda a nerd, lol, but I forget exactly when it was listed as in-stock on Amazon. It has been available at retail stores around my way consistently since a few days after Christmas.

If you wanted a 360, you could find one for retail price at a retail store.