More supply rumors are abounding with the pending Xbox 360 launch to go along with a few so-so reviews. From what I’ve read so far, those who have played the system on an HDTV — the way it is designed to be played — have been impressed with the visuals, but lukewarm on the games. The biggest games-related strength? The same thing Xbox does well now: Xbox Live.

A CNET commenter, Brian Dieckman, describes this as Microsoft’s “incremental improvement” strategy:

The Xbox is simply a hardware version of this same strategy, except this time, the “bug fix” (small incremental improvement)
is hitting your wallet.

In typical commenting fashion, another commenter, Daniel Desy, totally disagrees:

The XBox 360 is not an incremental improvement, but a huge
improvement in terms of actual technology used. The first
generation games never show what a console can do, and they
sure don’t here! The XBox 360 has a ton more processing power
than the previous one, a half gig of truely high speed RAM, and
a good graphics architechture.

The pre-release ying and yang continues.

I finally played the demo Xbox 360 unit with Call to Action 2 at Best Buy the other day and the picture was gorgeous. The gameplay? It was ok for the brief amount of time I played. Graphics aside, it didn’t seem like a game I couldn’t already play on the PS2 or Xbox, but no game can or should be judged on five minutes of gameplay, so I’ll hold off until I can play some Xbox 360 games for hours instead of minutes.

GameSHOUT members went around to the following stores in local cities and states and the numbers they were told were being shipped are as follows:

EB Games: Zero (other than preorders)
GameStop: Zero (other than preorders)
Circuit City: 30-40 each store
Best Buy: 40-50 max

Each of the Wal-Mart smaller stores only received 3 Xbox 360 units. The Wal-Mart super centers received a total of 10, which 7 are the full Xbox 360s, and 3 are only the Xbox 360 cores.

This whole shortage hardware game is a tricky one to play. If the supply is inadequate and thus the demand high then the people making the most money on systems will be those who resell systems on places like eBay. If supply is greater than demand, then the hardware must sell itself, which with a lineup of games that is more about sequels than anything else, could prove to be a tougher sell. However, I’ve seen a few people say they are going to be using them as a Media Center extenders.

Do not underestimate the X-mas factor
In my past launch day experiences most of the first wave of console buyers are hardcore gamers. The PSP, that was released at the end of March was no problem buying at several stores on launch day. However, the timing of the Xbox 360 launch enters another factor that considerably impacts the situation: the X-mas factor. With the holiday season upon us, there is no telling how many parents will be scrambing to the stores hoping to solidify the Xbox 360 early to put under the tree.

Things could get very interesting this coming Tuesday. How many readers will be out there trying to get their hands on an Xbox 360 on launch day?

2 1/2 days left!

Did this post make you go hmm?

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