Xbox 360 Shortages, Or Preparation for New SKU(s)?
While everyone anticipates the announcement of Gears of War 2 along with a ton of info including a possible demo on Xbox live next week of Too Human at GDC there’s one thing Microsoft may announce that most people didn’t expect. It’s been well documented (You can check it out for yourself if you walk into your local brick and mortar stores) that finding an Xbox 360 in 2008 has been fairly difficult. In response, last week Microsoft PR came out and said “It’s just a cause of better than expected sales during the holiday period”. That statement may have served more than the one purpose of spinning Sony’s first monthly NPD victory since the release of the PS3. Maybe this whole shortage has been buying Microsoft a lot of time over the course of the last few months to develop and introduce new SKUs.
I took what Microsoft had to say at face value that supplies were coming, but they never did specify of which flavor. I know taking information from a retailer is pretty skeptical at best but this was brought to my attention this morning and make of it what you will but it appears extremely odd that online retailer Amazon is now showing that EVERY Xbox 360 SKU as “Discontinued by manufacturer: YES”.
6 Comments, Comment or Ping
nabo
http://keithelder.net/blog/archive/2008/02/17/XBox-With-BluRay-2-Quad-Processors-2GB-HDMI-7.1-Surround.aspx
go read that, then realize that YES we will be having a new sku, and yes, it will still suck, and yes it will still be as customer unfriendly as the last 5.
Feb 17th, 2008
Wolf26pack
Ahh Very Good find!!! I don’t think this is mere cocindence. Microsoft may have something up there sleeve. Although there still is one Xbox 360 that doesn’t say discontinued and that is the Limited Edition Halo 3 360. I believe it is because no one wants it and when amazon finally sells out it will find the disontinuation sign on it too.
Now we can only hope that the next 360 SKU’s have the Jasper Motherboard so that both the CPU & GPU are 65mm instead of just the current 65mm CPU & 90mm GPU. I also hope that it has built in Wifi and well to me 120GB seems big enough at least for my 360 but if it was bigger I wouldn’t complain. Now finally the price, I can only hope that the high end model I am describing stays within the range of the current Highend Elite at $449.99 but if they were to drop the price to $399.99 and it had all the above I described then that would be the 360 I would buy.
Now the question is if this is happening what will the PS3 counter with? Perhaps a 160GB PS3 with Dualshock 3 Controller & Backwards Compatibilty added back in. Although that last part about the B/C is probably not going to happen. Now to wait and see what annoucments are made at GDC. We might even get a early annoucment 1 day ahead by Microsoft of Sony but who knows looks like we will have to wait and see.
Feb 17th, 2008
vril
Opus and Valhalla
Feb 17th, 2008
Michael
Oh yeah, 360 with Blu-Ray is definetely coming out in the near future and I have only 1 thing to say - “EAT IT FANBOYS!”
Feb 17th, 2008
Anonymous
The article is partially false. All of the 360 SKUs have not been discontinued, only the Go Pro Value Bundle. The New Xbox 360 SKU wirh HDMI is still available and has not been “discontinued by the manufacturer.”
Nothing is wrong with the current game format of the 360. Stop being Blu-Ray fanboys. Blu-Ray is nothing but a hyped up DVD and I hope MS never gets it. Microsoft has already stated at CES 2008 that they have no interest in making a Blu-Ray 360. We may get a add-on that’s it. Blu-Ray is a bunch of nonsense and a waste of money. We are three years into the console wars which usually only last 4 years, stop panicking even if Sony does well this year they have lost the war this time around.
Mar 9th, 2008
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