360 Shortage Rumours Marketing Ploy?

Joystiq wonders out loud if the shortage rumours going around about the Xbox 360 may not just be a marketing ploy on Microsoft's part. From the article: "The bottom line: in all likelihood, you'll be able to walk into just about any store on November 22nd and obtain an Xbox 360. But all it takes is a little, good, old-fashioned FUD (Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt) to drive sales through the roof and make this rumor a self-fulfilling prophecy." If this is in fact a ploy, it may be backfiring on them. Gamasutra is reporting that an analyst is downgrading his opinion of how the launch will go based on these hardware shortage rumours.

More on the effects of the rumours...

[WTBF]

Here [theinquirer.net] is some more information about what the proposed shortage is causing people to do.

Dur

[Gogo0]

If MS were truly afraid of there being a shortage, they would delay the launch of the Xbox2. Arent they always touting how they will have such a headstart that will put them in an unbeatable lead?
Delay it for a month and fix your launch planning issues, an eleven-month lead can still be spun by marketing.

No, that's the plan!

[jspayne]

Are you kidding? They want there to be a shortage during the Holiday rush. Not a big one - not so much that they miss making fistfulls of money - but one just big enough so that there are TV news reports of soccer moms beating each other senseless over the last unit at the local Toys R Us.

The real marketing question is how many units to ship to make sure there are just enough so that almost everyone gets one.

Remember the Xbox?

[metamatic]

There was supposedly going to be a big Xbox shortage too. I used to work across the street from Best Buy. I remember walking through every day, and they had stacks of unwanted Xboxes. Same at EB, they couldn't shift 'em and started offering special bundles.

Now, PS2 on the other hand... Those were hard to find. The worst bit was when I got a PS2, I couldn't find any Sony memory cards anywhere.