How Bad Will The 360 Shortage Be?

shrouded writes "Rumors have been growing the last few days about hardware shortages for the launch of Microsoft's new video game console this month. No one is speaking about it officially, but off behind-the-scenes whispering makes it sound like initial supplies won't even cover people who have pre-paid for their machines. eToychest spent the weekend asking retailers what they anticipate for the Nov. 22 release date, and its not pretty."

Comments

Shortage? Not of advertising.

[AndreiK]

Even if there is a shortage, I predict it will be extremely short lived.

Also, this is all artificial. Slashdot is proof of it - there is an advertisement every day on this supposed shortage - most of us even believe it now because its been drilled into our heads for so long.

I'm more interested in the shortage of games

[IIDX]

I believe only two games have gone gold, which means a max of 2 games will be available at launch as of now...

Who cares about buying the system on launch day if you can't play the game you wanted yet?

This could be a manufactured rumor, too...

[Malor]

Microsoft probably wants there to be a big buzz about shortages, to get more people to pony up and purchase the first day.... the rumor thus becomes sort of a self-fulfilling prophecy. It would not shock me AT ALL if the source for this one is Microsoft itself. They want it to be special, scarce, and hard to find.

The way to combat the problem, as others here are mentioning, is just to ignore the console completely. There aren't going to be very many good games for it at first ANYWAY. The games aren't going anywhere. You'll still be able to play them if you wait until the consoles are easy to get. They're just graphical updates of existing games. They'll look fantabulous, but they're not going to play differently. It's just the same old shit with a facelift.

There's NO rush on this... the games will be just as much fun in February as they would be in two weeks, and they might be a little cheaper.

Hmm.. didnt they the same about the PSP?

[AzraelKans]

If you check on the articles past year, you will notice every single article on the PSP predicted a shortage. Sony predicted a shortage, IGN, slashdot , etc. They even pulled "anti -shortage" schemes one psp per customer ,no change of PSP for dead pixels, etc. Does anyone remember having any problem to find a PSP on xmas? They do that based on PRE-SELLS only, and yes I bet there will be a "shortage" on pre-sells, since fans buy their stuff on those, but Alas regular people dont. Stores have bundles of those in the ware houses, and it turns out regular people wont buy them. So if you want one, dont "pre buy" it , just walk to any store and buy it, Im sure there will be plenty to go by.