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XBox (Games)

Xbox 360 Still in Short Supply 89

Posted by Zonk from the that's-a-big-ouch dept.
Spad writes "The Register is reporting that the Xbox360 is likely to remain scarce well into the spring, citing component shortages and a lack of manufacturing capacity. In an interview with USA Today, Circuit City said that due to the shortages they won't be promoting the console, as there's no point throwing resources at a product it can't sell. Microsoft had hoped to ship 2.75m consoles in the first three months, but are currently well short of that mark, having shipped a mere 600,000 units since its launch two months ago." Supply issues continue to harm the system's sales, moving back the Australia launch of the console until late March. Update: 01/27 15:19 GMT by Z : Despite these setbacks, Next Generation reports that Microsoft expects to ship their goal by the end of their fiscal year.
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Xbox 360 Still in Short Supply More

Xbox 360 Still in Short Supply

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  • The Holiday Season Speculation (Score:4, Insightful)

    by eldavojohn ( 898314 ) * <eldavojohnNO@SPAMgmail.com> on Friday January 27, 2006 @08:59AM (#14578020) Journal
    I remember there being speculation [slashdot.org] that the reason you couldn't acquire an Xbox 360 was because Microsoft was purposefully halting production. Many people thought that perhaps Microsoft was up to business tricks and shorting themselves on the production of these devices in time for the holiday season.

    The net effect, of course, to be able to create such a hype that everyone needs one regardless of how much it costs.

    I don't think this effect occurred, however, as I don't seem to need one.

    And so I waited in expectation for the flood gates to be released as wave after wave of consoles hit everywhere. And I waited. And waited.

    Is it possible that they were seriously having a hard time producing the units before the holidays? Or is this just their marketing tactic biting them in the ass with retailers balking at the cruel fates Microsoft tried to assign them?

    • Re:The Holiday Season Speculation (Score:4, Insightful)

      by CastrTroy ( 595695 ) on Friday January 27, 2006 @09:03AM (#14578052)
      I think that they may have had lower production than they thought. Either due to difficulties producing them, or a marketing tactic. The result is however, that they only have a short time left until the other two consoles come out. If they don't sell as many units as possible, then they've missed their chance. When you are first to market, you are supposed to sell as many units as possible, so that by the time the competitors get their product out, nobody wants it because they have already bought your product.

      • Re:The Holiday Season Speculation (Score:2, Insightful)

        by Anonymous Coward
        When you are first to market, you are supposed to sell as many units as possible, so that by the time the competitors get their product out, nobody wants it because they have already bought your product.

        Don't forget that the reason to be out first is to ensure that every developer produces games for your system; look at the PS2, the small lead it built up in its first year ensured that (most) third party developers were building or porting games to the PS2. If the only system you can get Resident Evil 4 and
    • My EBGames also had repeatedly said that they wouldn't have any for months and months. Funny, I walked in to Best Buy, and they had a handful of 360's on two separate occasions. Granted, most were core's - but I could have picked one if I wanted. I wonder if BB has some type of special agreement worked out regarding supply.
    • Yeah, even on the story on this same topic posted a few days ago, I speculated that this was a complete fabrication.

      If they still can't meet demand, to the point that their advertising is suffering, then I have to concede that I was wrong and Microsoft really does have manufacturing problems. (heheh)

      I suppose my Microsoft bias is showing, but I really did take this long to convince me that they weren't operating some vast global conspiracy in this instance.
    • I'd love to see the PS3 and the revolution come to market with full force, no shortages. Don't take prepaid orders, just send every retailer a couple hundred (or thousand) units, and enjoy the news coverage of the people in line on midnight opening day, who are not just waiting to see if they get one, but are going to get one.
  • I think the retailers are quite mad that there are no units to sell. I heard on guy at EB, that do to the backlog, they wouldn't have any available units until April, and that was if you ordered in December. I doubt if the situation has gotten any better. I don't know that many people who really care to buy one. It's expensive, buggy, and doesn't really have that many good games available. If MS doesn't get their act together, then the Revo and PS3 are going to hit the shelves, and they've lost their c
    • It's expensive, buggy, and doesn't really have that many good games available. You're full of crap. I have had it since launch, and I have not seen any bugs creep out of the woodwork, nor had any problems with it what so ever. I think the launch lineup is rather good, with two very good racing games (NFS and PG3), a very good horror fps (Condemned), a spiffing arcade/adv (Kameo) and a couple of other noteworthy FPS's (Gun and PDZ). I wouldn't really call it expensive either. A decent graphic card for the
      • Apart from Kameo, which actually looks like something new and interesting, there's no games that make me want to spend $400 on new hardware (console, extra controllers,...). I'm sure that the graphics are great on the new FPSs and Driving sims, but those types of games are available on other systems, and I don't feel that it's worth it to go out and buy a new system, just to play similar games with graphics that look better. And I know that there's lots of people who have no problems with their new 360s.
        • I really doubt I'm the only one that doesn't have a buggy unit :)

          It's when you get the games on high def (1080p) on a 150" screen (I'm using an LCD projector) that you really can enjoy the 360. I guess this will be true for the PS3 too. All the games I mentioned looks and plays extremely well.

          Of course, you could say the same for the PC. I have one of my computers hooked up to this setup as well, and Half-Life 2 on hig res. with high details is quite astounding.

          The first month, I had my 360 hooked
    • " I don't know that many people who really care to buy one. It's expensive, buggy, and doesn't really have that many good games available."

      If no one wanted to buy one, there wouldn't be a "shortage" genius. Its cheaper (adjusted for inflation) than the NES, SNES, N64, PS1 or PS2. It had one of the best launch lineups for a modern console (name a better one) and only about 2% of people experience any issues whatsoever.

      What other biased anti-M$ crap can you dream up.
      • Where do you have the 2% figure from?

        Also 2% is a pretty high failure rate after just a few weeks. Especially when it gets warmer and dust starts to collect everywhere, the failure rate will probably become much higher.

    • "It's expensive, buggy, and doesn't really have that many good games available."

      The food sucks and there isn't enough of it! ;)

      Right now, I don't feel too bad that I don't have an XBox360 yet but, once some of the new games come out this spring, I'll be disappointed if I can't get my hands on the 360.

  • At this rate... (Score:4, Funny)

    by elrous0 ( 869638 ) on Friday January 27, 2006 @09:01AM (#14578031)
    The PS3 and Xbox 360 can both launch on the same day.

    -Eric

  • No way, IBM can't fill demand? (Score:1, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Wow, it's really too bad no other large companies [apple.com] had recent experience with IBM's chip production capabilities and could have illustrated to Microsoft that supply might be a problem.

    Certainly nobody was disappointed that the PPC970 failed to reach 3GHz within the roadmap, or that supplies were short, or that power consumption and heat expelled was at the back of IBM's mind, and was so distressed by this that they, say, changed architecture [apple.com] for more reliably available, lower-wattage, cooler-running chips.

    If

  • Similarities? (Score:2, Interesting)

    by marshallh ( 947020 )
    I am beginning to see some interesting parallels between the game industry now and the game industry back in 1983.

    1. We are seeing more and more games that are rehashes of earlier titles... remember all the crap titles for the 2600?

    2. The game industry has reached a point where people are going to college just to write games, and end up mediocre programmers. Much like the ones that got hired in 1983.

    3. Do you see much heart go into the games today? Reminds me of Atari 2600 Pacman. The programmer was
    • If Nintendo do pull something good, nay, amazing out of the hat, they probably do stand a fair chance against Sony and MS. In fact, if those two don't get their act together, and Nintendo has plenty of consoles ready at launch with good titles, Nintendo can win.

      I don't expect to see it though. I think ultimately the PS3 will come out tops despite the delayed launch(es). It looks like being the PS2 of our time :)

      A lot rides too on whether the HDTV revolution does happen. By the looks of it, it may be a year
      • Personally, I decided not to get the Xbox 360. The majority of games I like come out for PS2 and Xbox, and after the first spike of good Xbox games, it dropped quickly off. Seeing this, each new game I bought for the PS2.

        Now some of the best games coming out for Xbox 360 (Oblivion, for example) are also coming out for the PC, so I'm just going to get the PC version. I realize MS doesnt want to hurt its PC gaming market by making too many games exclusive to Xbox and not PC, but that's probably hurting Xbox s
      • I think Nintendo is safe for at least this generation with no HDTV, for a number of points

        1)New TVs are expensive. HDTV is even more expensive. COnsumers are not yet willing to pay the extra, on average
        2)The lifetime of a TV tends to be around a decade. Most people will not be buying new TVs anytime soon.
        3)Not all people put the game system on their main TV. Hard to say what the majority is, but most people with kids at least tend to put it on a second TV, so adults can watch TV while the kids game. Th
    • You really can't compare 1983 with 2006...
      1. There are rehashes, sure, but there are also tons of original titles (Shadow of the colossus, darwinia, fahrenheit etc.), and the "rehashes", by which I suppose you mean sequels, are often well done and better than their prequels.

      2. No one went to college to be game programmers in 1983. The idea would be laughable. If they did, we'd have better games back then.

      3. As in no.1, lots of original games are released, with heart and soul gone into the making of them.
    • 1. What do rehases have to do with crappy games? There were a TON of crappy titles out for the 2600 in 1983 but they weren't sequels or rehashes for the most part. The worst offenders were the variations on Pac-Man or Space Invaders/Galaxian. I'd say we are better off now than we were then. At least now when I buy a game called M*A*S*H, it might actually be about an aspect of the show instead of being a helicopter shooter game.

      2. How is that anything at all like 1983? Were you alive in 1983? Colleges
    • I'm not following your logic here. The crash was caused largely by tons of really bad games flooding the market. This article is about a shortage of consoles. How are the two situations even remotely alike?
  • ...poor planning or a crappy idea of creating demand.

    How poorly do you make an expectation to sell over 2.5 million units in the first three weeks, to then only have sold 600,000 units in the first 3 months. Talk about setting a terrible expectation. If by April they are still having problems, they might as well hold off till next christmas.

    I'm wondering though, could this also be a result of beta testing?
  • My guess that this shotage is on purpose. M$ may be evil, they are not dumb. The shortage has probably more positive effects (on M$) than negative. Things like this:
    • Sounds great: Shortage in 360's continue!
      Or imagine the opposite: plenty of 360's that nobody wants... that's bad marketing!
    • 1st round buyer are cheap 'testers'. Think of the overheating and disc scratch problems. M$ only has to handle few garantee-cases in return of free testing.
    • the abundance of quality games is less noticed.
    • The succes of t

    • I think when there are shortages, companies sometimes try to "spin" the fact into a positive, to make it look as though they are in control. Product shortages are almost always a negative for a business unless you can use the shortage to increase the price, which doesn't apply here.
       

    • "My guess that this shotage is on purpose."

      Well, you're wrong. They have a current window where they're selling the newest console. It is to their advantage to get as many 360s into consumers hands as possible now, while there is no competition. The battle to sell the 360 isn't going to get easier once the Revolution and the PS3 come out. There is absolutely no reason to think that a company would not want to sell as many units as possible - even at a loss - MS still wants their installed base to dwarf th

      • They have a current window where they're selling the newest console. It is to their advantage to get as many 360s into consumers hands as possible now, while there is no competition.

        Plus the fact is that they're losing money on the boxes and need to make it up on software sales, and less boxes mean proportionally less software sales. (well, actually building and selling fewer boxes is an improvement on the old bottom line, maybe it is intentional :-)

        Building your base as first to market on the new gen plat

    • Apple used to be kings of product supply shortages, to inflate demand by introducing artificial limitations on products. The only difference is that there was actual demand for Apple products, Apple was just ensuring the hype would last more then a few days when a new product was released.

      Apple has finally realized that it isn't good to limit supply and instead are ensuring lots of stock available before they release a product. I think they found more backlash in announcing a product for sale, and having

      • Apple used to be kings of product supply shortages, to inflate demand by introducing artificial limitations on products. The only difference is that there was actual demand for Apple products

        Remembering back on some of Apple's product launches, I seem to recall Apple being terrible at reading the market and overproducing undesirable models while having chronic shortages of the nicer ones. Over and over again.
        Nowadays, they've streamlined (i.e. reduced) the number of varying models and have improved, i

    • I think at this point we can all agree that the shortages are not intentional, at least not anymore. They're reaching the point where retailers and consumers are starting to not care about the product, and that's a bad thing for them.
      • "I think at this point we can all agree that the shortages are not intentional, at least not anymore. They're reaching the point where retailers and consumers are starting to not care about the product, and that's a bad thing for them."

        360s on eBay are hardly fetching a premium anymore so I'd say there really isn't a shortage anymore. Shortages justify bundles [ebgames.com], which are the only way either Microsoft or the retailer make any money off a console sale. Just try to buy a 360 locally without shelling out for
    • Do Microsoft have to bankrupt themselves before people will stop all this utter nonsense about shortages.

      Shortages dont make money, they never have, they never will.

      There is every bit of evidence that shortages are a fact of production. There is no evidence that shortages are done on purpose, other than people on forums going 'The're evil they must be doing it on purpose.'

      Please feel free to correct me with some quantity of hard evidence to prove me wrong. Otherwise quit it with these idiotic conspiracy the
  • Well I was wandering down a typical UK city high street, and Virgin has 360's and PSPs and DS units in stock (yes I actually went and looked at them). Admittedly the 360's were all core systems, but its the first time I've seen stocks in..
  • I can down to EBGames or Future Shop here in Canada and pick up the "ultimate" edition off the shelf.

    I wouldn't say that is short supply.
    • Futureshop, BestBuy, CircuitCity, JoeSnackBar, have the 360 (lot of them) on store !
    • Here in Ottawa, there is none to be found, at least I haven't been able to find any at all.
      • I'm a little late on this and I can't figure out if this board has private messaging...but oh well. I've seen 360's in the Futureshop out in the SouthKeys Shopping centre. I've also seen some in the Bay's toy department at the Rideau Centre (its in the basement and out of the way - usually dead). But, all the 360's I've seen are core only. And, I haven't seen the hard drive for sale. So there are some around - just not any premium ones. Hope this helps.
        • Hmmm...haven't been by there. I've been looking around Kanata without much success, so that might help. Thanks
          • Cool, I suggest the FutureShop first. I was just there two or three days ago. I haven't been to the Bay in a couple of Weeks. Again, no hard drives for sale though...kinda shitty.
            • Actually, at the store where I work we can order in the hard drives, there just hasn't been a lot of demand. Try the New Technology store at Algonquin College, we have a few orders being filled in the next month, so you can just order one there.
  • Could it be that MS put too much emphasis on being first to market, or getting it released in time for the holiday season? It would appear that they didn't have all the bugs worked out(overheating power adapters), and now that they overestimated the manufacturing capability so they don't have enough units to put on shelves. If they had waited a bit longer and released it for holidays 2006 instead, maybe they could have included the HD-DVD drive as well. They could have lowered the price to undercut Sony and

  • Is there any way... (Score:2, Interesting)

    by casualsax3 ( 875131 )
    ... I can just write "hahaha" and not get modded a troll? Pretty please? What Sony and Nintendo need to learn from this, is that they need to stockpile the crap out of their console before it hits market. Sony for example should be pumping out PS3's right now, that way when it hits market they can actually sell 3 million immediately. This is a huge blunder for Microsoft - they've blown their head start pretty badly... and not Dreamcast blown - Saturn blown.
    • Thing is you dont know if theyve blown their head start. In fact no one does.

      The 360 does not have the powering momentum that MS wanted it to have, but that doesnt change the fact that this may have a huge nock on effect.

      Nintendo I can see benefit quite a bit off of this because they tend to fill demand faster than the others. This time seems no different, their hardware is cheaper to produce so they can gear up fast. Still they are coming in to it with MS already having a presence so its anyones guess as t
  • "I can down to EBGames or Future Shop here in Canada and pick up the "ultimate" edition off the shelf."

    Put it on ebay, I know dozens of people I work with still waiting.
    • I've just checked ebay and there seem to be lots of consoles for sale there... Many don't seem to be selling. Perhaps you can inform your dozens of waiting people...
  • Worse than the supply of the hardware, I'm starting to see more complaints popping up about the lack of new titles, and how a lot of people are now focusing their attention on the Live Arcade games than store-bought.

    Looking ahead, there doesn't seem to be a deluge of games coming out for the platform anytime soon. Well, at least games in the STORE.

    I've talked to a few folks I know who managed to get a 360, all of them are kind of embarassed to own a machine as expensive as that and then use it to play the
  • Even though I have a discount for the price of my current Xbox for the new one (one reason to get a decent warranty), I'm waiting until later this year to make the move. I'm not a wild fan of Xbox, and I do not see any major reason to upgrade. The real games I like (HL2, etc.) are still available on the Xbox. The 2 just seems like additional capability for the future, but not the present. Any one else waiting?
  • If gamers a mad at MS for x360 shortages in US, in japan the reality is very different. The few people that are bought X360 consoles did not buy anygames(0.91 games per console sold http://www.gamespot.com/news/6141161.html [gamespot.com]). One could imagine a ploy of the japanese to increase MS games renenue loss since each 360 sold hurts more than 100 bucks in MS pockets.
    • The reason being that the only game for the Xbox 360 that any Japanese gamer would ever be interested in is DOA4, which didn't launch with the console.

    • Re:Shortages... (Score:2, Insightful)

      by WarForge ( 212749 )
      I am not sure why this has to be discussed every time the cost of consoles comes up, but MS (and Sony and any other company selling a product at a loss) does not lose more money when they sell their product off the shelves.

      Lets assume the console costs MS $400 and they are selling it for $300, a loss of $100. Now, that is a sunk cost [wikipedia.org] to them. If the console stays on the shelf unsold, MS is out $400, but when one is sold (at $300), they are only out $100.

      So, there is no ploy by the Japanese to hurt M

  • Shortage?? (Score:3, Informative)

    by Turken ( 139591 ) on Friday January 27, 2006 @10:17AM (#14578607)
    Too bad I don't want to buy one. My local walmart has had a couple premium 360 boxes sitting on the shelf for at least two days. Of course, I don't know which is more sad... that the town I live near is so small and poor that people can't afford 360 boxes, or that the town is so small and boring that there's nothing better to do than shop at walmart every day.

    Anywho... I suppose the lesson learned from this is that if you really want to get the hot hardware, try looking in places where it won't sell as fast. If I remember correctly, the walmart strategy is to put a store in every town of 10,000+ people. So, if you live in a city, check the map for nearby towns that are just big enough to have a big-box retailer, but also more isolated and/or poor.

    It worked for me when I bought a nintendo DS on launch day. By the time I decided to get one, most everywhere was sold out, but I found a K-mart in a smallish town that was a good 20-30 minutes from anything of interest (including the highway) and sure enough, they still had plenty to sell.
  • This article states 600k units shipped. This article [gamasutra.com] (from a previous story) states 1.5 million shipped worldwide. Now the 600k figure could just be domestic but I would except a higher ratio of domestic units to exports.
    • The 600,000 unit was made up by a research company.

      As you said, MS shipped 1.5 million units. 900k of those were in the US for the fiscal quarter ending Dec 31st. So as of DECEMBER, 900k were sold in the US. As of now... I'd guess a million or so.
  • Back in E3 05 I described the general strategies heading into the next generation for Sony, MS and Nintendo. I thought that if Microsoft had a strong launch with several good titles, they could gain a lead that they might be able to hold onto this generation. On the other hand, I thought that if Nintendo and Sony could generate enough hype surrounding their systems, consumers might be reluctant to shell out a lot of money on the 360 too soon.

    Well, here we are and I think it is obvious what has happened.
  • not here in Richmond, VA

    over the last 2 weeks I've been in the CompUSA and a couple of BestBuys and they all had units sitting on the shelf. possibly some of the smaller shops like EB may be experiencing a shortage, but not the big retailers.

    now, I cant say if they were the base units or the all-included ones as I'm not much of a gamer
  • Microsoft sold 1.5 million consoles by the end of 2005. 900,000 in North America, 500,000 in Europe, and 100,000 in Japan. These figures were announced with their FY06Q2 results.
  • Sounds great. By the time it launches here, there may actually be games worth having on the console.

    And then I'll wait a year or more for it to drop in price. I'll probably end up buying a second-hand one for Halo-3.

    Maybe.

    Still haven't finished Halo-2 and my X-Box hasn't been powered on in nearly nine months.

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