Monday, November 28, 2005
Keep Checking Back for Xbox 360

Today, a couple of us spent a good deal of the day today pouring over feedback from forums and blogs. There are a couple of particularly nasty rumors that I’d love to address. I know Molly continues to work with the mainstream press, so you should expect news stories to continue.

Recall Rumors are 100% False: The nastiest RUMOR that’s making the rounds is that Microsoft is going to do some sort of a recall of the Xbox 360. Several forum threads I’ve seen are talking about folks going into retailers, only to be told that there will be no more units coming because of a Microsoft recall. NOT TRUE! If you're told this by a retailer, let me know.

Replenishment Units Are On The Ground: Also, there are reports of some retailers saying they won’t have units for weeks or months. Also not true (in most cases). My theory is that some people might be tired of the constant calls, so they’ve made something up to get people to quit calling. We are shipping units constantly (we have chartered 747’s regularly flying in with units). Some retailers have a backorder wait list, and might not have units that will be on shelf for some time, and some retailers might allocate more units to one store over another, but all stores that have placed orders are getting replenishments regularly.

In fact, we have confirmation that units are on the ground and on their way to retailers this week. When those will go from our warehouses to retailer warehouses, then to retailer locations is largely up to those retailers, so there’s no easy way to say which store will get product on which day. You should call your local retailer to find out. We remain on track to ship 2.75 to 3.0 million consoles in the first 90 days.

Hardware Replacements in as Few as 5-7 Days: I saw a couple of posts where people with problems were postponing calling 800-4MYXBOX. Not sure if it’s because of long wait times (now the rush of launch is beginning to die down, those are diminishing), or that they think they might be weeks without a console. Truth is that we’re turning around replacement/repaired units extremely quickly, in as few as 5-7 business days. Our support reps have been trained to troubleshoot your problems over the phone. When a return is necessary, we overnight a prepaid box to you, which allows you to overnight your console back to us. In most cases, we troubleshoot/repair/replace your Xbox 360 in 1-2 days, and we overnight it back. We planned for world-class customer satisfaction, and have plenty of consoles, parts, and trained employees to handle the volume.

We're Not Holding Back: I’m continue to see comments/questions about Microsoft holding back inventory to keep the price inflated/keep hype going. We have shipped every console we’ve made, and we’re making more as fast as we can. Fact is, there is significantly more demand than supply, and will be for some time. We’re all gamers, and we all understand how frustrating it is to wait. We’re doing all we can to get Xbox 360 controllers into the hands of those that have waited so long. But believe me when I say, we aren't holding units, and we're not creating hype for hype's sake. There's no good economic justification for that (but that's the subject for another blog post...).

That's it for now...