“You mean you got a 360? You bastard!” I’ve had this comment shot in my direction at least once every day over the last three… meetings, office visits, lunch, dinner – even at bars. On November 22nd, I had it at least a dozen different conversations that started with this comment. Know what’s funny? It’s usually from a fellow Microsoft employee, who didn’t think to pre-order – or worse – didn’t pre-order until September or October… I pre-order the weekend after I read about the 360 release date in IGN and saw that ebGames was selling out of pre-orders.
To those of you in gaming press that think that employees were given special consideration for consoles or that we’re miniacly twirling our mustaches while there’s a holiday shortage, re-consider it and call it bunk: there’s a whole bunch of people on the Redmond campus that are in the same boat as the rest of retail America.
And we make the freakin thing and yet a lot of people have no choice but to watch sites like Xbox 360 Tracker – go figure.
wasn’t the shortage ibm’s fault anyway… I can’t get any unbiasd news…
My question is, how many X360s were released at launch, and did the stores know they were only going to recieve 20 at best?
I dunno who’s fault it is, per se – IBM, the production line, Microsoft, the retail stores… I just know there’s no magical warehouse in Renton that is stockpiling millions of 360 consoles, like some people have been making it out to be.
I also dunno how many were initially shipped – or how many continue to get shipped each week – but I do know that a number of stores over extended with pre-buys and that other stores played some games with the public via bundling… there were a bunch of posts running around at some point over who was getting what – not all stores got the same amounts, I know that. The fact that they shipped to more than just “games” stores – i.e. Target, WalMart, Fred Meyer, etc. – that makes for a wide channel.
I further suggest that people forget that there’s always at least one item every Christmas that goes in short supply – it’s just a nature of the holidays… has been since the Atari 2600 in ’78. Another example is the Cabbage Patch Kid rush in ’84. Elmo, anyone? The biggest difference this go around is that bloggers are around these days. Most bloggers are the target audience of the 360. Make for a loud and powerful combination…