I call bullshit. If they were so easy to find, why were people complaining that they couldn't find one weeks before MS even muttered the word "shortage" and why did a completely unbiased moderator on this site state that his retail store wasn't getting the 360s they ordered from MS? Why were all major retailers in my area showing the Pro and Elite ~90% out of stock in January?

Oy. I don't know why I bother with fanboys. Reality is subjective to some people.

Rocketpig, we are talking 300,000 consoles! They couldn't replenish 300,000 consoles in NA!? They dont sell too well in Europe, and don't sell in Japan. Maybe the first week or two of Japan you would see shortages, but all the way through Feb in March in its only good selling region!?

December 07, even if you want to use Chinese new year as a cop out, they could have been producing enough console to supply January, or atleast Feb. However long it takes, by the end of Feb those console produced in December should reach retail by the first two months.

I mean really, Xmas 06, Chinese New Year, demand in December>November>October!? What the crap is going on here? Xbox360 is now the PS3 last year. Con-fucking-firmed. Can any rational, unbiased person please read this excuses and tell me that it makes sense. This a multi-billion dollar company and they can't keep up with 300,000 consoles in their best region. It's BS. Total BS. Maybe POSSIBLY January. No well in hell Feb.

Jandre, I agree with you on some level. It's complete bullshit that MS fucked up so badly as to create a shortage of a console that didn't sell enormously well year-over-year. There is no excuse for them to allow that to happen.

I'm only arguing the point that there was a shortage, which there was. I won't give MS any leeway on the idiocy that caused said shortage. Absolutely stupid.

I think its safe to assume that MS probably has a firm hold on the production lines and capacity of the 360 by now, and that these shortages are mostly PR spin. I've never heard of a console suffering from major shortages 2.5-3 years into its cycle, especially one with such low sales.
Also, it would really be in MS' best interest to keep their best market by far well fed, which again leads me to believe that this shortage thing is a poor attempt at saving face with the consumers.

Call bullshit if you want to. Ill go look at my past post and see if I mentioned it, I just never thought anyone would argue that a 360 selling less than 70,000 a week could be sold out. In all honesty, I thought the 360 was going to outsell the PS3 the first month until Microsoft said it wasn't.

But believe whatever you want, I'm realistic about things and I have no reason to lie. Its funny to see so many people shellshocked and in denial. Maybe, JUST MAYBE, the Xbox360 was selling well because of Halo 3 and COD4? There are a million explanations as to why the 360 is selling less than the PS3 that make sense, but everyones wants to take the "ZOMG SUPPLY CONSTRAINTS" route. 25,000 more consoles people. Thats not supply, thats demand. Period.

Ahh, I must have misread it. If that's he is saying, I see that as a very plausible explanation as to why MS ran low.

And to all that ask why MS would lower the price if they had a shortage, the above reason makes even more sense with them lowering the price.

If my theory was the issue, production would not be going up anytime soon. If the above explanation is the issue, then once they get the factories back to full capacity, they will be able to crank them out very fast (sadly still with a high failure rate).

MS dropped the price because it’s selling less then they want, they are just selling more than expected.

I don't give a flying crap :-/