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XBox (Games)

Where In The World is the 360? 100

Posted by Zonk from the scam-in-scandinavia dept.
Chris Kohler's Game|Life column wonders aloud Where is the 360? Despite assurances from Microsoft that more units are making their way to retail channels, it is still effectively impossible to get ahold of one from a store. From the article: "So, uh... where's the press release for Xbox 360? The congratulatory hype over how much cash they pulled in during the first 24 hours? Xbox dot com has nothing. Were it not for that Halo 2 press release, I wouldn't be asking, but... For that matter, where's the 360 itself? It's now been over two weeks since the launch of the 360, and that nebulous ether affectionately referred to as 'the retail channel' has not seen a single additional Xbox 360 unit. How do I know? As has been well-documented here, I had a preorder reservation placed at the downtown EB Games that was originally supposed to be a launch-day unit but got bumped back to 'second shipment.'" Kotaku has commentary on this as well. I'm in a similar situation as Mr. Kohler, since Slashdot is not cool enough to receive a review console.
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Where In The World is the 360? More

Where In The World is the 360?

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  • Slashdot is not cool enough (Score:5, Funny)

    by Jarlsberg ( 643324 ) on Wednesday December 07, 2005 @02:51PM (#14204546) Journal
    Hehe, that's rich. After all those years of being so nice to Microsoft, you don't even get a single console to review... Oh, the irony. ;)

  • Surprising Indeed (Score:5, Funny)

    by brunes69 ( 86786 ) <slashdot@nOSpam.keirstead.org> on Wednesday December 07, 2005 @02:53PM (#14204563)

    I'm in a similar situation as Mr. Kohler, since Slashdot is not cool enough to receive a review console.

    This is very surprising considering all the positive press that Microsoft routinely gets out of Slashdot. From past experience I can safely say that most Slashdotters would have been rushing the stores after the guarenteed-to-be-glowing review of the new console produced by such a respectable company.

  • Count yourself lucky you don't live in Europe. The only way you'll get a PSP before christmas round here is to pay an extra £100 ($160) for a bundle.

  • Article Text (Score:4, Informative)

    by chad.koehler ( 859648 ) on Wednesday December 07, 2005 @02:58PM (#14204604)
    Aside from the DIRECT quote in the article summary, the article consists of only three more sentences.

    So trust me when I say that nobody seems to have any idea when that second shipment will even arrive. It was supposed to be a week after launch, then two weeks... Where are they?
  • Has anyone who had a malfunctioning 360 gotten their replacement yet? Just wondering since nobody else is getting a 360 right now. Is Microsoft still out because filling their repair orders first? Are there even enough repair orders for that to be possible?
    • Every comment I've seen from people getting their units replaced has been exceptionally quick. Typically under a week from first phone call to new unit sitting under TV.
    • Actually, initially the turn around time was pretty quick... now it is a different story. Numerous accounts of people now being sent the pre-payed carton but not being given even a general timeframe to expect the replacement is becoming common.

      It seems that they are having to use the supposed "weekly" shipments to fill the repair orders.
      • given the "small*" initial allotment of the x360 [*small considering this was its "launch" in the country its most desired] i have heard ALOT more stories about x360 malfunctions than i have ever heard from any other console. the officially released MS numbers put the number of returns in the 4% range, i not sure i believe that but assuming that they only shipped a million out. that means that there are about what? 40,000 returns? thats alot. that sure dwarfs the psp and ds dead pixel problems. and at least
        • Now, just imagine that if my small sampling of store numbers are true at approx. 20%... that number goes up by *five* times! That's 200,000 units. How about after Christmas when even more of these 1st run 360's get opened for the first time.

          As far as Japan, they could honestly care less. I have friends/colleagues and family in Japan and the general consensus is that there is none. One friend just laughed and asked if MS felt he was stupid enough to accept the new xbox when it actually takes up MORE room whe
          • honestly, anyone thats ever opened up an original xbox would know that the x360 isnt any smaller componentwise. they went for a smaller "external" laptop drive instead of the cheaper desktop sized one. if you took the harddrive out of the original xbox and the huge ass casing it sits in... rearrange a few parts to utilize that space, and voila! you have a console the size of the x360. sans the huge friggin power brickhouse. =)
    • anecdotial evidence, sure, but a buddy of mine in Michigan has been waiting a week and a half for his (was promised the console by last friday by MS)

  • Conspiracy Theories (Score:3, Interesting)

    by RoadDoggFL ( 876257 ) on Wednesday December 07, 2005 @03:04PM (#14204646) Homepage
    Ok, so if the 360's second shipment slips past Christmas will all of the conspiracy theories that claim the shortages were intentional finally go away?

    I'm not so sure who to believe but missing Christmas would be taking the whole "artificial shortage to increase demand" thing a bit too far and into the realm of stupidy (no, I'm not putting that past Microsoft, I'm just saying that it REALLY wouldn't make sense then).

    • Re:Conspiracy Theories (Score:4, Interesting)

      by hal2814 ( 725639 ) on Wednesday December 07, 2005 @03:09PM (#14204679)
      I agree with you. However, it's still a long way to Christmas and despite what most people think, Black Friday is not as busy a shopping day (in terms of sales dollars) as some of the days right before Christmas. MS could still be possibly planning to end an artificially-created shortage during that time to get the most hype per shopping dollar, but that could just be my tinfoil hat talking.
  • In Microsoft's labs working out the kinks they should have solved before shipping it in the first place.

    I.e. don't be sad you can't get the Xbox360, chances are by the time you get one, it will be version 2.0 of the device that actually works.
    • I think you meant one of the following two things (We are talking about M$):

      1) "it will be version 2.0 of the device that works slightly better"
      2) "it will be version 12.0 of the device that actually works"

    • Version 1.0 works just fine, thanks. Take your unfunny, unoriginal FUD elsewhere. Oh sorry, I forgot this is Slashdot - as you were.
      • Besides the poorly-designed power supply, there's also the non-heat-related crashes which frequently occur in some of the games. The 360 is a piece of shit. I still plan to buy one later, though, when A> the power supply has been addressed somewhat, B> there are more games, and C> the price comes down at least a hundred bucks. By these criteria, I will probably have to wait until after the PS3 launch to buy a 360.
        • No problems here. Your mileage may vary, however.

          If you're having issues, you should call Microsoft. The device does come with a warranty, ya know!
          • The rate of returns is too high to ignore. I don't buy stuff because I like to return it to the manufacturer. They will get these issues ironed out, and the typical high percentage of early adopters will suffer the initial pains like usual.
            • And where are you getting your inflated figures from? Microsoft themselves has said approx. 3% of the units have had problems. This seems like a pretty normal failure rate (in the hardware industry.) Every complicated piece of machinery or electronics is assumed to have some percentage of problem units, and they are dealt with like any other problem, through customer service. That's why if you're having problems, you'd just call Microsoft. And according to reports around the web, you'll probably get your XB
    • Mine's working fine. I'm loving Geometry Wars. :)

      Then again, I have it well ventilated. My entertainment system has an open back, and the power-brick is on the floor, where it's not too hot. I suspect a lot of people that are having problems, have the console and/or power brick inside an enclosed unit. I even saw a picture of some guy's 360 on top of a TV. I don't know about you, but the top of some TVs can get rather warm.

      Sony will most likely run into the same issue with their PS3, unless they can learn f
  • ...in the workshop, of course. I make no claim to the number of defective units and I've heard everything from EB employees saying "Everyone that bought one loves it" to another EB across town (literally) mentioning that they're waiting to exchange 4 of them and 5 other customers are just going to deal with an occasional scrambled screen of death.

    From such a wide range of results though, I would assume that MS is doing what they can to ensure that the next batch will:

    a) replace all defective units with less
    • It sounds like there were two batches, and that version two was already part of the first shipment.

      I've heard stories from some stores that they've had no problems, and some that said every unit they sold was defective. That, to me, indicates that there are already a couple of revs out there, and that one is bad. It doesn't seem unlikely that any given store would get a batch of machines that are all the same revision in a single shipment.

      That should be pleasing news to everybody who has managed to get one,
      • Also: I can see the disc scratching problems being caused by boxes being stacked too high in a warehouse, resulting in some crushing. Not only would that only break shipments to particular stores, but it wouldn't be Microsoft's fault.

        It's not like the 360 is the first console to have disc scratching issues. (It is the only one of them that has a steel case around the optical drive though...)
        • The disc scratching problems are a combination of defect and user error.

          See, you can't safely move a 360 from horizontal to vertical position(or vice versa, or give it a good shock while it's horizontal) while it's powered up w/o causing some components of the drive to make contact with the disc. This causes a 360 degree scratch(which judging by the video I saw, could be resurfaced off since there didn't seem to be topfoil damage).

          As long as you keep the thing vertical or horizontal and don't walk like an
  • ...second shipments this monday. But with hundreds of rainchecks/preorders per store, when the hell are people going to be able to even get one without hassle? Get ready for the losses Microsoft, there's gonna be a lot of unhappy kids who would have had your console and produced delicious money for you that end up with a PSP or Xbox 1 as a christmas present.
  • I'll probably have to pick up a 360 since my anti-sony mood is making me weary of even playing my PS2...
    (yeah, on an unrelated side note, sad day when microsoft products seems like the lesser of two evils)

    But why now? Why the rush? Sure, it's cool, and it's new, and it burns in pretty colours when the powerblock overheats, but... really... all the games worth buying "new tech" for will be released at the earliest six months to a year from now.

    I'll wait until then. The added bonus of course being that I'll p
    • Ding! That's why I'll probably end up getting one around this time next year(when all the kinks are worked out, and it'll be cheaper too!). That and Live Arcade.

      Between the Revolution's download services, and the 360's live arcade service, I should have enough to never ever have to put an actual Rev or 360 disc in a drive.

      The PS3 has all the "meh" aspects of the 360 and no cool online service to make me even remotely interested. Plus, after going through 3 PS2s, I'm not too inclined towards buying Sony t
      • seconded on all points (except ive only gotten one ps2. It works, but only with some TLC).

        For me, xbox live arcade paired with some indie titles from garagegames is the reason i want one. That, and i am sometimes too lazy to go and buy games. Id rather just press a few buttons. Too bad the "download and play" thing the DS has cant be used to buy titles from nintendos online service. I swear, if they had that, id hand them cash soooo fast...
    • "sad day when microsoft products seems like the lesser of two evils" Um, what about Nintendo? Do they just get ignored completely? I suppose this might actually be a good thing for them, as they have worked hard to differentiate the Revolution from the other consoles, but I'm not sure they wanted to completely remove any ability to say that it just might be a "better" substitute, rather than a nonsubstitute.
      • No, Nintendo's late 80's/early 90's monopolistic software development agreements preventing a lot of companies from having titles published on the NES to be published on other systems in the US (Master System, TG16, 7800, etc) grants them the title of King of Evil in the console world.

        Then again, the cube is the only console I have from this generation. I guess the king of console evil doesn't bother me all that much.
      • Well, I must say... my first game console was a Nes. I had the first gen gameboy. I played that thing until it broke, and I mean there where no buttons nay more, just plastic rings that once housed a flat surface. I was a major nintendo fan boy as to upbringing.

        But slowly.. over the years... they grew to be the non-option for me. The Snes was cool, I used to rent N64 now and then to play golden eye with my four friends, split screen. That was the only great game we found for it. As for the gamecube, it just
  • If it makes you feel any better I work for a well known video game developer as a designer and we still failed at getting all of the xbox consoles we were promised. It's quite interesting to be promised X xbox's at release only to find out that our office would basically be holding a lottery to decide where the boxes that we did get would go. As a side note, each employee was originally selected by an internal promotion and lottery to be accepted to receive one in the first place. These employees then se
    • How's it feel people to spend $1200 on a system which will most likely melt itself into your entertainment center. ^_^
      I've no idea. I spent $399 on a system which works just great and is providing me and my better half some nice entertainment in these dreary winter nights.

      And explain again why employees of a development house should get easier access to retail units than anyone else? I mean it's one thing to complain about a lack of dev units, but seeing as you guys were paying for them yourself they are fo
      • The issue was that we were given this opportunity to pick them up through our company as opposed to waiting in line at the stores. I had a first shipment xbox reservation at Gamestop which I canceled when this offer arrived.

  • Answers (Score:5, Informative)

    by Errandboy of Doom ( 917941 ) on Wednesday December 07, 2005 @03:42PM (#14204940) Homepage
    So where's the XBox 360?

    On EBay, which currently accounts for 10% of all 360 sales [emarketbytes.co.uk]. Looks like prices from $550 to $1000. I kept wondering why the XBox was being manufactured for shortages [arstechnica.com], when M$ wasn't taking advantage of shortage pricing, but instead pricing under cost [mercurynews.com]*. One article [emarketbytes.co.uk] raises the speculation that the secondary market might be intentional.** Maybe M$ decided it prefers an auction economy, perhaps to dodge allegations of price [cnn.com] gouging [zeropaid.com], which are apparently all the rage, for better or worse.

    So where's the congratulatory hype?

    Here's [spong.com] some, though we're probably not seeing a huge amount of post-release PR because they can't meet extra demand such PR would generate anyway. And they probably gave their PR department a holiday after all their pre-release work [cnet.com.au].

    Or maybe they fired them after all their ads got banned from TV [kotaku.com].

    Where are our promo boxes?

    The other comments [slashdot.org] have covered this pretty well. Really, if M$ sent a big heavy box in the mail to the editors of /., would any of them actually risk opening it?

    Or maybe yours just got smashed [com.com] uh... "in the mail."

    *Another estimate of XBox cost/unit [businessweek.com], from BusinessWeek.

    **I don't actually think M$ planned to sell direct on Ebay to capitalize on created shortages, but it's still an interesting idea.
    • Or maybe they fired them after all their ads got banned from TV.

      LOL! They make three ads, decide to pass on airing one of them, and it gets out on the internet. Before long, it's not just an ad they decided not to air, but a "banned" ad - and now ALL their ads are banned! This one just gets more and more ridiculous.
    • I agree with the eBay idea. See for yourself [ebay.com]

      As of 5:03PM EST, there are 6654 Xbox 360 systems for sale on eBay!! WTF?!
    • How would MS make money off secondary market? Unless you are implying they are selling them on ebay themselves covertly.

    • Re:Answers (Score:3, Insightful)

      by moosesocks ( 264553 )
      On EBay, which currently accounts for 10% of all 360 sales. Looks like prices from $550 to $1000. I kept wondering why the XBox was being manufactured for shortages, when M$ wasn't taking advantage of shortage pricing, but instead pricing under cost*. One article raises the speculation that the secondary market might be intentional.** Maybe M$ decided it prefers an auction economy, perhaps to dodge allegations of price gouging, which are apparently all the rage, for better or worse.

      Seriously. Microsoft act

      • Re:Answers (Score:1, Offtopic)

        by nb caffeine ( 448698 )
        completely OT, but when i saw your username, i first read it as "mooses cocks" not "moose socks"

        I think the first way is funnier
  • As much as MS has tried to downplay the number of defective units the number is quite large. In a number of posts I have been trying to show how a poll I did of 30 EB\Gamestop's in the Northeast U.S. the number of defective units is about 20%.

    Everyone said I was full of shit and the usual crap that the average /. troll feels compelled to spout off... but at just my small sampling of 30 stores is showing around 20% I'm pretty confident this is accurate. At this rate were talking a fair number of replacement
  • Microsoft went to all this effort to push out something before their competitors that they put an inferior product out to market. I won't go into the whole 'yet again' thing because that's irrelevant.

    The point NOW is that they have spent millions of dollars selling us the xbox 360 telling us it's great, telling us it's wonderful, and relying on being first to market to beat out Sony.

    Also ignoring the fact that the original Xbox still has plenty of life in it.

    Hell, some people have this notion that the Dream
  • Although I have purchased and received my XBOX 360, I can not play it...

    because my wife plays XBOX Live Arcade all day long. (She's getting good at Hexic HD.)

  • Among the launches in the US, Asia, and Europe - Microsoft is nearing 1 million consoles sold already.

    PS had around 200,000 at launch and none more for 6 months.

    Microsoft is dealing with unprecidented demand here. These consoles talk a little longer to build than your average electronics device. This question is ridiculous.
    • I agree with AC here, you're pulling this outta your ass. From what I can find (no official figures, this is from oxm.co.uk) 300,000 were shipped to US, same to Europe, the thing won't be launch until the weekend in Japan. So that's 600,000 max, minus the 3% defective(if you beleive MS's figures).
  • It may be too early to say, but put me in the camp that say this launch has been just short of disasterous, mainly due to the lack of good games and console availability. I'd argue that the PS2 had a similar lousy launch lineup, but sold a lot better due to MUCH more effective hype. I remember that the graphics on the PS2 were supposed to cure cancer and raise the dead, no such melodramatic hype for the 360. The 360 has all the hallmarks of a product that was rushed to market.

    One of the biggest hurdles I th

    • And that's because the cheapest servicable HDTV system is at least $650...

      Do some shopping. I'm typing this on a PowerBook hooked to a Westinghouse 19" 16:9 HDTV / Monitor purchased at Best Buy for $450 dollars. I'm just dying to get a 360 hooked to this bad boy.

      By the way, it supports 1440 X 900 res which is higher than most of the larger LCD TVs.

    • Westinghouse 19"

      I don't consider a 19" TV "servicable". Especially when it's the same price as a 32" STV.

      And it's not "anti-M$ bias". MS was guaranteed to sit in the number 2 slot long before this console was even ANNOUNCED because of the way they've screwed the Japanese market. This isn't FUD, it's reality. Unless Sony totally blows the PS3 somehow they've got the Japanese market locked up, which pretty much means they have the console market locked up. Unless MS develops a kickass Live implementation in J
      • just a word of note. backwards compatibility for the ps2 works swimmingly well. only a select handful of titles do not work. the list of titles that dont work is much less than the list of titles that microsoft has been able to get working on the x360.

        also, the ps2 does improve the visuals for ps1 games, albeit only slightly. theres a setting on your ps2 to enable it. its not enabled by default to provide you with the best default compatibility. as for it not being a significant improvement... you have to r
  • Until this was put up on /. I hadn't really noticed that 360 coverage had gone off the radar, but now that I thik about it I'm curious as to why? Those first few days after its release I couldn't turn on the TV or jump on a tech site without seeing a news blurb or article on how the Xbox360 PWNED all! Now, its like it's last years fad in some regards. M$ usually likes to boast about how great they are and how amazing everything they create is, but there being hush hush. Strange...

    Oh well, time to go la

  • The M$ 360 Business Plan... (Score:4, Funny)

    by rubberbando ( 784342 ) on Wednesday December 07, 2005 @05:34PM (#14205864)
    Microsoft knew they'd lose money on each one they sold at their own devised retail price so I have concluded that their business plan goes as follows:

    1. Only release 10% of units produced to retail market to create huge artificial demand.

    2. Sell Remaining 90% on eBay at insane prices that desperate parents and fanboys would willingly pay.

    3. PROFIT!!!
    • Troll?

      'cmon now, you can't be THAT dim-witted. The systems being sold on eBay are not by Microsoft, but by individuals that somehow scored a system, and have decided to sell it on eBay for an enormous profit. That extra profit goes to THEM, not to MS. No matter what, they still take the loss on the original system.

      There are a couple of rumors going around of Target/Walmart employees "securing" systems immediately as they come off the truck, just so they can buy it themselves and sell it to eBay for huge gai
    • Microsoft's not making any money off of artificial demand here. They're selling the systems at a loss at a fixed price, and they're certainly not the ones selling on ebay.

      What they should be doing is selling as many of these things as possible (network effect [wikipedia.org]), and getting people to buy as many games as possible so they might actually make a profit. Coincidentally, the lack of Halo 3 at launch time should actually help this, as many people brought XBox just for Halo because the rest of the catalog was som
      • From your linked wikipedia article re: network effect:

        "Network effects were used as justification for some of the business models for dot-coms in the late 1990s."

        I wonder how those turned out...

        Nobody has a solid game catalogue, as you put it, at launch. It will never happen because time is always needed after launch for developers to properly make use of the console's specs.

        Let's say the games REALLY suck for XBOX 360 (I don't think they do, but whatever). If everyone and their grandma today had an XBOX 36
        • "Frankly you are stupid NOT to launch a console during the Christmas Season."

          Only if you bungle it up like this one. For someone boasting that they're doing a global launch and attempting to sell 3 million in 3 months, selling out the initial 400k stock seems a long way to go before they hit the 3 mil mark. Especially considering that the waitlist on pre-orders is back to at least February.

          Yeah, when the PS2 shipped, they had shortage problems. But there weren't the rampant allegations of having to wait
          • "But there weren't the rampant allegations of having to wait 4 months to get the one you pre-ordered 6 months ago."

            Is Microsoft to blame with the idiot stores like EBGames/Gamestop took pre-orders BEFORE THEY EVEN KNEW WHAT THE LAUNCH DATE WAS, let alone know how many they would have?

            You can't blame the manufacturer for problems with a few retailers.

  • Every day, I go looking for an XBox 360 in Philadelphia, PA. No dice. I keep getting quoted arrival times like "maybe February?"

    During this daily ritual of frustration, I see tons of 360 accessories and games sitting on the shelf. Actually, there are the exact same numbers of items on the shelves on return visits. Nothing is selling. Same number of WI-FI adapters on the rack. Same number of copies of Quake 4 as last week. And, so on. Are the retailers not pressuring Microsoft for more units? I mean, B

  • A rumor has been flying around that Xbox 360 will be available at Best Buy on the 18th. They should be getting the units a couple days before that and must hold them until the 18th. In addition, pictures have also been spotted on the Internet that show signs in Best Buys confirming the rumor.

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