Where In The World is the 360?

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.

Comments

Article Text

[chad.koehler]

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?

Stores around here in Puerto Rico got their...

[Wisgary]

...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.

Re:Has anyone gotten a replacement 360?

[radish]

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.

Answers

[Errandboy of Doom]

So where's the XBox 360?

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.

So where's the congratulatory hype?

Here's 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.

Or maybe they fired them after all their ads got banned from TV.

Where are our promo boxes?

The other comments 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 uh... "in the mail."

*Another estimate of XBox cost/unit, 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.

They are filling repair orders

[rAiNsT0rm]

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 units needed. One Gamestop had used three of it's initial shipment for replacements... two to the same guy. He had bought one of each launch title and a few accessories and then got TWO lemon units, the third one worked finally.

MS was so sure of themselves boasting and hyping their new product:

* 10 Million by '06 - Not looking likely.

* Weekly shipments up to and after Christmas - umm, yeah.

* The total number of defective units is very small - uh-huh sure, tell me another story uncle Bill.

* Replacement is an easy process - Now customers are being sent the pre-payed carton but not being given any date/time to expect the replacement unit. Nice.

If this thing was such a top-notch massive sales bonanza, then why is MS so quiet now after the big release? Hmmm, could there be troubles? Nah... couldn't be. Everything is perfect, everything is fine, the 360 is fine, there are no defects, just pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.

*cough*Bullshit*cough*