Where is the X360 production bottleneck?

[Agisthos]

I think its pretty safe to say that MS has messed up their launch. What with shipping fewer units for X360 than the original Xbox had at its launch.

So the question becomes where is the production bottleneck? GPU? Considering there was talk about even raising the clock speed to 600mhz due to good yields, logic dictates it probably isnt the GPU. CPU? We have not heard a whiff about the CPU in the press, prehaps IBM is not on top of things and late as usual.

 

[AlphaWolf]

You have actual numbers of xbox360 units shipped?

 

[Gholbine]

It's hard to know where the bottleneck is, since Microsoft is outsourcing to a bunch of 3rd party manufacturers. It is unlikely that any of the individual components have an inherent flaw that make them difficult to produce, but ATI has had problems fabbing their X1800 chips, so this would lead me to believe that Xenos might be the problem. But hey, ATI isn't fabbing the Xenos for Microsoft anyway, so I could be wrong.

I do agree that Microsoft has made a mess of this launch, though. The Xbox 360's entire existence and future plans are based on an early launch, and getting as large an installed-base as possible before the PS3 arrives. You cannot make the decision to kill your current console early, launch your next-generation console early while forfeiting much possible technology, and not be able to meet the demand your system has produced. It's idiocy.

 

[valioso]

why is there a bottleneck?

 

[BRiT]

Why do you think there's a bottleneck?

 

[AlphaWolf]

Is there one?

 

[Skrying]

The console came slightly early, easy as that. MS wanted to get it out early as possible, even if that meant with a limited number of units for sale.

I highly doubt there is a bottleneck anywhere really. They shipped a fairly reasonable amount. For the second console of a company that did good enough to fight another round not to sell out. I remember fair worse for PS2.

 

[DuckThor Evil]

I think its pretty safe to say that MS has messed up their launch..

No it's not, factories are pushing them out fast, and MS has shipped over 1 million units, so there arent' any bottlenecks, it's just that launching in 3 major territories at the same time is not an easy task, considering that, I think they have done good job, and with steady flow of units coming in every week, there really aren't any major problems. OK some people has to wait a week or two to get his system, but that's not bad at all, I had to wait months to get the PS2.

 

[Carl B]

Well, I've heard there's a supply constraint on the HDD side of things - not sure if it's true or not, but it would explain a number of things such as the extreme rarity of the add-on post launch and the greater ratio of Cores entering the channel post launch relative to MS' prior stated 85/15 distribution.

 

[The GameMaster]

Well... it would be my opinion that if there was to be a bottleneck in the production of XBox360 consoles it would be in the production of the processors that goes into the system. I have heard from some sources that this is more of a distribution issue and not a production issue as the yields on the most limiting component (the processors) is said to be excellent. I do have differing observations that I believe are causing these "shortages" of the XBox360 console.

It is not helping the situation by launching the console in all three major markets nearly simultaneously as that means less available units for a given territory. It is also not helping the situation that there have been numerous "Free XBox360" promotions such as the "Every 10 Minutes" that was being done by Mountain Dew as that further reduces the amount of systems available to sell at launch. Lastly... the "Two SKU" idea where you have two versions of the same console further limits the inventory of the more desired version (in this case being the "Premium" Version) as that means the more systems manufactured as "Core" versions means less systems manufactured as "Premium" versions.

There is one other factor I am sure people have not really considered... and this is more of a perception issue than anything else. There ARE more systems (overall) available at the launch of the XBox360 than there was at the launch of the PS2, now why does it seem that much worse now? The answer is simply that there are more stores today than there was then... meaning the more stores that you have the fewer each individual store will recieve on that launch point. So even if you have the same number of systems launching each store still gets less because you are sending these systems to more stores.

There really is a lot influencing this storage, both perceived and in reality... but eventually things will work out. It is almost always this bad when a high demand product is launched of this scope... though it does seem worse than usual. I fully expect the PS3 launch to be just as bad if not worse, depending on how the production of the PS3 console goes.

 

[Powderkeg]

The bottleneck is in shipping, not production.

It takes 3-4 weeks to ship something from China to the US so that means that every system manufactured from as far back as late October is sitting on a ship in the middle of the ocean somewhere.

 

[AlNom]

Didn't Moore mention that they chartered a bunch of 747s for shipping?

edit: Allard says:

Q: Where is it being manufactured?

JA: We're making it in Europe. I'm sorry, China--two different manufacturing facilities, one by the name of Wistron and the other Flextronics, both companies that we use. … We've got boat containers. We've got planes. We're going to have machines leaving on both.

 

[Gholbine]

Didn't Moore mention that they chartered a bunch of 747s for shipping?

Yes. The Xbox 360's are being shipped by air, not ... ship. How long that will last, we don't know. The supply problem is definitely production.

 

[Joe DeFuria]

Yes. The Xbox 360's are being shipped by air, not ... ship. How long that will last, we don't know.

No, we don't know how may have been shipped by air vs. traditional "shipping."

 

[Carl B]

Well regardless, land vs air, I'm putting the hard drives up again as a possible factoring culprit.

 

[Gholbine]

No, we don't know how may have been shipped by air vs. traditional "shipping."

The machine released 5 days ago. I think it's safe to assume that, if any 'air shipping' was done, it's been all air-shipped so far. I believe they will have done the Xbox 360 U.S. launch by air-shipping, and Japanese and European launch systems will have been delivered traditionally.

 

[AlphaWolf]

The machine released 5 days ago. I think it's safe to assume that, if any 'air shipping' was done, it's been all air-shipped so far. I believe they will have done the Xbox 360 U.S. launch by air-shipping, and Japanese and European launch systems will have been delivered traditionally.

They started manufacturing months ago, not 5 days ago. Most likely the air shipping was just to have the maximum number of units available between launch and xmas. This would mean that units manufactured after the time when they could have reached market by traditional manner will have been air shipped.

 

[Joe DeFuria]

The machine released 5 days ago. I think it's safe to assume that, if any 'air shipping' was done, it's been all air-shipped so far.

No, it's not.

 

[LunchBox]

have you considered that maybe it's just a simple flow of supply and demand?

 

[efxonly1]

If stores had extra x360's sitting on their shelves, then people would be complaining that M$ failed with this launch. All of the media outlets would be reporting about how easy it is to get an x360 and that it's a sign that most gamers are waiting for the PS3. I'm sure there is no bottleneck and M$ sent retailers exactly what they wanted to send them.