find this funny.
MS wanted to launch first to build a strong enough user base to go against the PS3,then they say they will do a world wide launch,which mean one shortly after the other from US to Japan to EU.
within one month units will be out along with games in every retailer in the usa , europe and japan . Demo kiosks are out , devs are making money , ms is making money and people are seeing it and wanting it and are talking to thier friends about how they can't get it and it builds hype .
And now they don't had consoles to sell until april for walk in costumers?
there will be plenty of core units for walkins and the cores will sell .
However you do understand that ms is sold out of units from now till most likely january with some stores sold out till april . That means there is a huge demand for thier system and ms is basicly selling as much as they can make .
Would the same be true if they launched with sony ? Also what would they gain by sitting on hardware and games for another 10 months or so before sony launches in the states ?
This way people who own the systems are buying games which means more dev support and more money for ms , those who have the systems have thier friends over that don't have the systems and are getting them interested by seeing it and playing it .
Then why release ealy any way,the PS3 will be probably out before the shortage is even over,not to say that MS has not confirm pre-orders numbers which is mighty odd,do to the fact that by this time on 2001 in the same time frame thery were already saying over 300,000 pre-orders.
Why would they be confirming preorders ? I'm sure we will see numbers after launch. They want people to try adn get units , it creates hype . Not only that but i'm sure with a world wide launch thier numbers will be lower as they told some stores (others didn't listen) to stop preorders back in sept .
As for the ps3 , mabye it will be out by the time shortages are over. However so what. Ms would have sold all they could make up to that point and when the ps3 launches they are sure to have shortages also or most likely launch in one area at a time . Which means ms who no longer has shortages are able to keep selling units . Production costs would have also shrunk as they now have 5+ million units made .
Now there is a shortage without official numbers of how many pre-orders they had.
This sound more and more like it is to boost hype and sales.
Mabye, but looks like its just ms taking a page out of sonys playbook .