I would expect that from some fly-by-night company, but J.C. Penny? That is absurd.

But... it has the battery pack! Surely that's worth $400.

I may be wrong, but didn't MS claim that they would have plenty of sets to sell and that there wouldn't be any shortage?

i cant believe that 8 full days after launch and microsoft still hasn't shipped a single system to any retailer in the country. this is CRAZY. I was at toysrus at 4 am on launch day and left empty handed (the manager failed to tell the 200+ people in line that they only recieved 3 systems) and i at compUSA at midnight on thanksgiving, and best buy at 4 am on BlackFriday. nada.

There is no excuse for this "shortage" and what a mess Ebay is right now. Hundreds of sellers owe buyers thousands of systems and they are just waiting for the shipments. So basically gamers are competing with ebayers for these. If only M$ released a ton at launch, this would have been avoided.
I would be happy if they would have pushed launch back further to february and had enough units.

But as of right now, im with the general concensus:

Worst. Launch. Ever.

And i honestly don't know if I believe that we will see 2nd shipment this week. It would seem too good to be true, no?

I agree with you entirely. I, for one, am sick and tired of these Xmas shortages. I want one for my family as much as the next person, but if I can't find one at a decent price, f'em....I will wait for the PS3.

BTW, after seeing what JC Pennys is doing, I plan on boycotting them this season. 'Tis the season, eh?

Sounds like somebody should have preordered (early).
Call around, Costco gave me a date for their second shipment (actually first in my case). Put your name on a list at one of the game stores, I was #1 at my gamerush, now, I am #8 (to get a second one).

There are many people that preordered, many putting $100+ down, that are still 20+ people down on the list to get one, so that is not a true solution. MS did screw up this launch. I did not preorder becasue MS stated there would be plenty for launch and Best Buy was not preordering, and I want to use my Reward Zone to get $15 ($30 if I can get one this weekend) back in GC. Unfortuantly even if MS gets some out this week, with the prices on ebay most will get bought to be put on there and the shortage will continue.

If I had had any clue there'd be a shortage I would have. I honestly thought at $400 there'd be enough for anyone who wanted one (or at least a good portion of them). Maybe I was naive, or maybe I was a bit too young at the launch of other systems to be aware of this possibility. All I know if this whole thing is very frustrating.

I wonder if Sony is taking note that so many are willing to pay $800+ for a next gen. system?

The rest of the "world-wide" release hasn't happend yet has it? I was wondering if this kind of shortage is worldwide, or if it is American commercialism running rampant?

Are these region encoded, could European boxes be shipped here? Like ordering from Amazon.co.uk after the release (or pre-ordering).

It appears you can order one for 280 Euros from the site for the Dec.2 launch.

Hold on...you're jumping the gun. The real judge of the launch will be if Microsoft can keep up continuous shipments. It doesn't matter how many units are available on launch day, you'd still have the majority of people not getting one. It's obviously impossible to ship out 1 million consoles, but even if they did, how much of a difference would that have made? Instead of only 5% of the people getting one, 10% do?

Again....we'll have to see what happens in the upcoming weeks. With the PS2, Sony screwed everyone. *NONE* of my friends were able to get one in the first 6 months, and all stores were telling us that they were not getting followup shipments (that was deliberate, so expect the same for the PS3). I just hope Microsoft doesn't do the same thing.

I was just going to chime in ... it was the same (or worse) with the PS2 launch, so don't think Microsoft has the exclusive on people leaving on launch day empty-handed.

I would think the European ones would have different power supplies and region encodings (for DVD playback). Not sure though.

If Microsoft can somehow ship a boatload of them before Xmas, and the demand remains high, they did an incredible job of building up hype by shorting early. What is still not clear is how many of these are actually being bought to be played, and how many to resell... but all indications point to the fact that the buying public can be whipped into a sufficient frenzy to make a $400 machine seem affordable. They could have launched all premiums and still sold out. Or they could have launched all cores, and everyone would have bought the HD separately.

If they don't get more out by Xmas, I wonder how well it will do. With the other systems coming out next year, and the fact that $400 bucks is a lot to spend for a non-Xmas present for the kids...

haha, don't forget... games are $60 and controllers are $50... plus the cost of xbox live (a must, in my opinion)...

you're looking at $600 just to start, with 1 game.
that price will probably drop in half within the next 1.5-2 years, but the way things are looking, we may not be able to get our hands on a system until then anyways

by the way, my friend had his 360 hooked up to his samsung DLP 56" tv and the DVD player picture quality leaves a lot to be desired... his $150 toshiba "upconverting" dvd player looked leaps and bounds better... so if you are thinking of getting this system to save room by replacing your dvd player, you may want to think again.

Uh... but the 360 doesn't upconvert, so of course the toshiba would look better, right? Though that brings up a good point, as I haven't used the 360 to play DVDs... how's the playback?

Don't be naive...they do this crap on purpose....to generate excitement and urgency over obtaining the "golden" Xmas gift. The urgency will stimulate tons of additional sales for them. This seems to becoming a marketing ploy every year. As far as how many they produce and ship...I worked in planning and logistics for a major company for years...the planning involved in the production and release of something as marketable as this is orchestrated perfectly. However it plays out....don't kid yourself...they planned it. Whether it pays off for them in their pre-emptive strike against PS3 is yet to be seen.

wow, i just assumed it was upconverting and it still looked like shit. i guess i was seeing a 480P picture... but it didnt even look as good as an average dvd player, honestly. skin tones looked orange and there was a lot of noise that wasnt visible AT ALL on the toshiba upconverting.

Why would MS not implement upconverting when all the games run in 720P/1080i anyways? should i even bother asking ,lol.

Guys, upconverting DVD players generally stink. You can't add any pixels to a DVD. Unless your TV is really bad at displaying a 480p picture (and it shouldn't be that bad), you are usually better off to run at 480p -- exactly what's on the disc.

FWIW, I tried out the 360 DVD player and liked it a lot better than my $100 Toshiba DVD player. If you aren't spending over $200 on a DVD player, you are getting a junky DVD player, anyway. Go pick up a $300 Denon DVD player and you will see the difference w/ a Faroudja processor.

This one is not MS's fault. By DVD Consortium rules, a DVD player cannot output hidef (i.e. 720p/1080i) via component video. It must use DVI or HDMI, both of which incorporate copy protections. There are some older DVD players that still do it, but new ones aren't supposed to. Of course, some Chinese-made players will flaunt the rules, but no player produced by a reputable company like MS will.

It wasn't the same. Didn't Sony ship 1.5 million on launch? Compared to 400,000 for the 360.

I was in a Toys R Us tonight and the guy said no more until March. That just seems impossible. Wouldn't retailers and the 3rd party game producers be POed that all their accessories and games will just be gathering dust on the shelves?

I wish M$ would just make an offical statement saying what is going on. That way we don't have to constantly check stores hoping that a new shipment will arrive. I can deal with getting one in March if they said that's when we are going to see them next. But keeping us in the dark about it...that's piss poor marketing. If I don't hear any word about it in the next two weeks, I'm going to spend the money I saved for the 360 on a PSP.

Eric - read the USA Today story posted above. There will be weekly shipments, the first one coming by the end of this week.

Then why aren't retailers informed about this? I wish they were, that way they could give those interested an idea of when to expect their shipment. How could they be kept in the dark until one day they just show up?

Well, keeping retailers in the dark prevents them from having to deal with another launch day camping-type event. Shipments are coming. This has been confirmed by multiple sources at Microsoft. They have chartered 747s just to fly units over here from the factories in China and elsewhere.

Do you people really think they are just going to stop making units for 3 months? That makes no sense economically.

Hmm, very true. If everyone was saying a specific day I'm sure there would be some major camping. That doesn't explain the "not until March" comments. But then again, if they told people "someday this week" the "did you get them yet?" calls would probably increase 10-fold. Even so...

To update the JCPenney crap:

http://www.joystiq.com/entry/1234000753070247/