Xbox’s still in high demand

I’ve yet to see one in any store I’ve been in (Calgary, AB). Mind you, I haven’t looked very hard since they’re too expensive for my pocketbook right now. A single income family cannot afford much outside the necessities.

No worries finding them in Australia, you can walk into pretty much anywhere that sells them and grab one off the shelf. The thing that is a little scarce around here, is the wireless controlers.

I think you have your sources wrong or are intentionally trying to mislead.

xbox 360s are selling for $170 in Japan (aka the “premium” edition sold in the US) and $60 360 games are selling for $29.

anon: all I can tell you is about the experiences I am having. If you think I’m wrong, go into Best Buy in Bellevue and try to buy one.

Employees are reporting in from around the world and they are reporting that supplies are getting better, but they are still flying off of the shelves.

Be sure and add Brandon Live when you get it online

Can’t comment fellas. My roomate bought one from his friend a week after it came out. Had many a fun night of Fight Night Round 3, Ghost Recon, Call of Duty 2, and the latest, Oblivion.

Hopefully when it comes time for me to buy my own (~September) they’ll be readily available..and maybe modded.

The Premiums have been consistently sold out at the Best Buy in Cambridge, MA. I’ve pretty much decided to wait out the summer and try to pick one up when I get back for the fall college semester

The Premiums have been consistently sold out at the Best Buy in Cambridge, MA. I’ve pretty much decided to wait out the summer and try to pick one up when I get back for the fall college semester

I bought one last night myself. Very little blogging happened on techcrunch today for some reason.

Michael: the entire Web 2.0 industry is gonna take away your Xbox if this continues!

Yeah…the old “I’m buying it for my son, not for me” bit. My flatmate has one and since picking up ‘Oblivion’ he’s like a squirrel in winter, just emerging to search for acorns. Or in his case pot noodles.

Enjoy the 360.

Silly question, but how many stores are stocking the XBox 360 packages? If you have a handful of stores stocking 20 (and selling out) as opposed to lots of sotres getting two each, then you’ll get a different buzz on how the sales are doing (I see to remember Pat McVeigh and Ed Colligna engineering a simialr trick with the very first Pilot). Would there be a certain ‘management’ of the stock chain to ensure the buzz is on the good side of ‘flying out the window?’

A very common problem for gaming journalists, Mike (or technology journalists in general). Namely “do I have to give it back now and actually write a review?”

Here’s my Xbox 360 story for the week: I had a dream sunday night that I was in a BestBuy getting an Xbox 360. Monday I call the local BestBuy and the lady on the phone says, “Oh yea – we got 50 core and 50 premiums in on Friday – I think we have about 30 of each left.”

Needless to say, by 6pm Monday night I was deep into building up some power on Tiger Woods. The thing is out of this world – truly.

My experience was that I returned the damn thing soon after I got it, deciding that backwards compatibility should mean something other than being compatible with only 13 percent of my existing library. Covered over here on my personal blog: http://daggle.com/060131-111336.html. We had to wait forever to get them in the UK. I don’t think we have shortages over here any longer. Might go back to it down the line; then again, might just wait (longer) for the PS3. If Microsoft effectively wants me to have two different game boxes, might as well start my HD game experience with someone else. Really bad marketing, too, because I was big Xbox fan.

I also thought I had the best Saturday of my life last week, when I got one of the two Xbox 360 Premiums that were on the shelf in the local Target. I came back a few days later, and another one had replaced the one I bought, and there were still two on the shelf.

Oh well. Supply issues solved I hope. Ghost Recon is still incredible.

I actually picked mine up in a really small mom and pop shop in Brockport NY for the actual price! I was surprised considering the only other place i could find the 360 was the bigger stores and they only had the core version and I needed to buy two games and a controller. The cost was $600 a well for the package!

Luckily I didn’t have to pay that much for mine. I paid $400 for the hard drive version.

I didn’t know 360′s were selling for such a low price in Japan, but the number of units sold is tiny. Less than 1,500 in a week. See this:

http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=8755

I’ve been half heartedly looking for a 360 for the last couple of months. I had hoped to find them at Costco, but I haven’t been lucky enough to show up on the days their shipments come in. But earlier this week after a failed Costco trip I wondered over to Best Buy in Silverdale (WA). Sure enough, they had a bunch of each variety. But I left without one.

Why? Because the sales-kiddy working for Best Buy assured me I needed to purchase their $50 replacement warrantee. As usual, I declined his offer but then he went on to tell me that 35% of the 360′s come back to the store defective and he saw three come back just earlier that afternoon.

Do I believe him? Probably not. But either way I wasn’t going to make a purchase after that. So I’ll continue to wait until Costco has their bundle available again. Costco has _never_ tried to make me buy an extended warrantee to be comfortable going home with something I purchased there.

I have seen them on a shelf at Best buy here in Columbus as well.

Scoble, if you don’t play often, you will love the arcade games. They are so easy to pick up and play, and cheap too. I almost easy to put down, but that isn’t always true.

Even if you only get a free Silver account for yourself, I think that you should post your gamertag. Comparing your gamerscore and acheivements to your friends and family is part of the fun.

Enjoy!

I’m living in Cleveland Ohio and I was driving to a code camp in Boston and I had to go to the middle of nowhere Pennsilvania to get an Xbox 360.. You can read about it over here: http://spaces.msn.com/zeodomain/blog/cns!A53B5F71A68DBB25!734.entry

I was able to pick one up very easily at Game Stop in Bellevue. I blogged about the whole thing because, well, this machine is truely fantastic, imho!

http://blogs.msdn.com/tobint/archive/2006/04/02/566935.aspx

I’m trying not to be critical/judgmental about your personal life, but in reading your blog for technical information I often end up reading these type of posts, which I’ll admit, are sometimes interesting.
However, every time I see a post like this I think to myself that you should seriously check out the book Affluenza.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1576753573/sr=8-1/qid=1144254327/ref=pd_bbs_1/102-0223676-1389752?%5Fencoding=UTF8

or http://www.pbs.org/kcts/affluenza/

The movie’s incredibly cheesy, but it’s easier than the book to tackle. It’s often available on ILL from your local library.

Just a thought that keeps crossing my mind and thank you for your entries.

Supply issues not solved in Peoria…nor Sacramento, firsthand reports. Seems best around Seattle, or maybe just the only still remaining demand, had a loaner for awhile, less desire to slurp up one myself, but now back in the mood given some of the games.

Always been more the XBMC functionality type for my video and display purposes (prevents rendering for quick demos, event coverage quick kick up etc.) but 360 doesn’t support all the video recode high-compression formats, assuming in a typical Microsoft fashion, that all that use such are but movie pirates. Sigh.

yeah geeky fun is right, RS! But take a look at Xbox.com – they just added the ability to send friends requests from the website.

And Gamertags are connected w/ .net passport logins.

And MSN Spaces added Xbox 360 modules, with current info about recent games played, achievements, etc.

These are different groups at MS converging to make this connected experience happen. What’ll it look like 2 years from now?

Michael: maybe – if MS opens up RSS and APIs, we’ll see gaming merge w/ Web 2.0 in interesting ways…