did anyone on here get a xbox 360?

I give up, the lights are on but there's noone home

That is probably the stupidest thing I've ever heard.

How can MS have an estimate of how many consoles they need to produce when not even the shops know what the demand is going to be like?

Here's an example for you. The Tiger Gizmondo. It's a handheld console with a variety of games, like the DS but slightly bulkier.

Just like the 360 it was launched before the arrival of a sony product.

Just like the 360 it was hyped to fuck by the games press who said it was the biggest handheld since the DS. A lot of people in our store thought it was going to be really big...

We start taking pre-orders for it (as we have done for every console since the PSX) and noone wants one. We order five (just to keep some in stock for launch). Not one single gizmondo has sold since launch.

Imagine the proverbial egg we would have on our faces if we had placed an order for 100-200 360's and the same thing happened.

Any retailer isn't going to take that kind of risk.
And stop arguing that it's shite on MS's part, because the majority of shops did exactly the same with the PS2, PSP, GC, as they are with the 360.

This takes us back to your original point - it's the retailers who have cocked up, not the supplier. And in this case it's the retailers who have continued to guarantee pre-orders to their customers even after they have seen their allocation. They knew there was a huge demand and they should have told people they may not get it.

Saying that, this is about the fourth time I've typed it and you're still so dumb it hasn't filtered through that dense mass you call your head.

You can tell me all you want that sony were able to fulfil all pre-orders for the PS2 - I know for a fact that's rubbish. They were able to fulfil more than Microsoft, but their supply of the PS2 for months after that was at best erratic and at worst an utter joke.

I know you're talking bollocks about your pre-orders because we've never sent customer pre-order details off to any console manufacturer/supplier since we started selling consoles and games instore... And I don't know of any games retailer that does that.

Thats not how supplier agreements work with consoles...

It's not SOR (Sale or Return) like it is with most music or DVDs, with those if they don't sell we can return them to the supplier and they can sell them to someone else.

However with hardware (and this is most shops, not just us) there are no return agreements. We order what we need and sell it on. There isn't even a provision for sending faulty hardware back, Microsoft are dealing with that themselves like apple do with the iPods.

Using your example there, if we ordered 50 xbox core 'no frills' consoles it would cost us about 9-10 grand.

If we ordered the wireless 360 in that quantity it would cost 12-13 grand.

Now multiply that by 300 (roughly the number of stores we have in the uk.)

You're talking a bare minimum of about £3m on consoles alone, before you take into account accessories, and related products on that console (games etc.)

Thats a huge amount of money and a huge risk to take on an unproven console.

I don't know about you but I wouldn't risk it without dipping my toe in the water first and seeing whether people actually want them (which is what your post says).

play haven't got that big an allocation of them?

If you'd come to us you would have one on launch day.

I'd imagine there's loads of people hanging on to see what the PS3 is like