BHR-3 said: thanx guys never knew that thought all old stock be gone by now guess not though |
..Ever notice the massive discrepancies between any hardware companies' reports of "units shipped" versus what VGC claims?
There is usually between a 1 million and 2 million unit discrepancy between the 2 numbers - in favor of the 'units shipped' report by the hardware company. The reason for this is that there has to always be a significant number of consoles in the supply chain - at a distributor near the hardware factory, on a boat or plane going to a country for sale, at a distributor in a specific region (such as Asia or Europe), at a regional distribution center (such as a Wal Mart distribution center that can cover a 100 mile radius), and finally in the store.
That supply chain is absolutely MASSIVE for every company - In Microsoft's case, the fact is, those Holiday Bundles were being made and packed months ago in China. The new Jasper hardware (with the 150w PSU and 256mb internal drive for the Arcade) started production in August, and in some cases - only hit stores very recently. The absolute newest your going to find a Made-On date for a given console is most likely going to be 1 month, or a little more, and that's if your in the very slim minority that get that new of a console.
Point being is that since the supply chain is so massive, you will ALWAYS have a significant amount of hardware being sold that's 'old'. Heck, I remember people getting 9 month old Xbox 360's last year, since Microsoft over-shipped consoles for Holiday 2006.
Although new X360s are most likely moving briskly, I can assure you that draining the supply chain of old consoles isn't an easy task - especially with the fact that Microsoft is re-supplying the chain at a rate of around 500,000 consoles a week as we speak (in addition to whatever stock has been lying around at distribution points the world over).