No XBox 360 for me :(
Looks like I struck out.
I have got to say that I think I agree with the tinfoil hat crowd about MS deliberately engineering the appearance of a shortage. I had retail drones telling me they are not expecting to get more in until January (after only having a handful for resale). If what MS is saying is true, and that this is because a world wide release then that was a mistake and they never should have tried it. I hit a dozen places none of which had any or had gotten cleaned out this morning by fan boys willing to wait out all night. Pretty nuts for a console that is getting so so reviews and has a pretty weak line up if you are not a hardcore race or sports fan franchise fan.
Really though I think they are trying to create the cabbage patch kid phenomenon of yesteryear. They wan the news to sound the shortage alarms and show pictures of everyone waiting in line everywhere. Some times grabbing market share is about grabbing mind share. Personally I think it’s going to back fire, people will just get pissed off and blow it off entirely and wait until the PS3 comes to do a real side by side and then buy the better system. Also angry disenfranchised people taking frustration out on retail folks is going to spawn some might bad karma for anyone who had a hand in architecting this slowly rolling ball
Will the stores get more tomorrow, more Friday? If so the retail folks don’t seem to know. Not impossible that they are clueless but that seems like yet more signs of a potential disaster. People where turned away in droves at one Circuit city this morning… how does this help MS? Does it somehow really increase demand and thus drive that non-existent critical mass?
The Retailers can’t drive up the price but E-bay and Craig’s list are going nuts. I counted about 70 entries for 360′s on Craig’s list ranging from about $500 for a core system to a 3k. Most seemed to be around 1k to 1.5k. Are you people nuts? Anyone who plays that game deserves to get fleeced IMO. How does this help MS, are those people really likely to feel kindly toward MS and give them a lot of business once the buyers remorse kicks in?
Anyway. Bummer but perhaps for the best for now, by january the next gen MCE extenders will be trickling onto the market and that was mainly the functionality I was looking for from the 360 since none the current games really float my boat.