XBOX MANIA!

Best Buy XBox 360 Inventory Locator

Michael Gartenberg: The Xbox Live Arcade Experience, Xbox 360, It’s about the Games, and my favorite of course, Xbox 360, the Media Side. “As soon as you turn on the Xbox, you’ll get notice on your MCE. Just follow the directions and download the new version of the extender software and you’ll be good to go. How does it work? Rather well. Video is clean clear, the overall experience feels much more like the native MCE experience and I had no problem using online features like MTV.com and Newsgator over the Extender. HiDef content streamed (for the first time ever on a an extender) and it’s a real value add for Xbox owners with MCE machines. There’s no doubt that 360 is the extender strategy at MSFT for the time being.”

BBC News: Q&A; on the XBox 360: “Under the hood even bigger changes have been made. The raw processing power of the Xbox 360 is many times greater than the original console. Estimates of how much more powerful it is vary between two and 10 times as powerful. The power boost is due to the Xbox 360 having three processing cores to the original’s one.”

Microsoft Monitor: The Best Strategy to Get an XBox 360. “Here is our recommendation, if you want to buy an Xbox 360 tonight or tomorrow: Stay away from the small electronics stores because their units are probably already reserved, but your chances are good if you are willing to wait in line at a large store such as Best Buy or Walmart. In addition, you probably don’t even have to be at the store early in the morning and our Best Buy source told us that the launch should be comparable to a previous gaming blockbuster, the Sony PSP. “For our Sony PSP launch, we still had some units at the end of the first day,” he said.”

Seattle PI: Gates at XBox Launch. “The Bellevue Best Buy where Gates appeared clearly provided the best shot in the Seattle region of landing one of the consoles. I counted at least 275 console boxes stacked around the store. As noted in our story, many other stores received initial shipments numbering in the teens.”

Major Nelson: XBox 360 Commercials. “MajorNelson now has links to all of the 360 commercials including the “bang” ad previously released only for internet and cinema audiences.”

The Unoffical Google Weblog: XBox 360 Fanboy opens. And the empire gets bigger and bigger.

XBox 360 Fanboy: XBox’s Corporate Celebrities: “But the Xbox team have become what Dean Takehashi calls “executive rockstars.” J Allard and Peter Moore took the stage at Zero Hour in front of a crowd of screaming fans and Takehashi noted, “In 17 years of journalism, I’ve never seen somebody ask a vice president for an autograph.” It’s like Beatlemania for nerds.”

Associated Press: Gates: Xbox 360 Key to Microsoft Strategy. “Analyst Rob Enderle said the move to more closely link Xbox Live with Windows Live intends to bolster loyalty to Microsoft products. Microsoft “can tie that stuff together so that you as a customer become wedded to the Microsoft platform for everything you do,” he said.

Microsoft also is attempting to more closely tie Xbox 360 to the rest of its universe by trying to make it a conduit for other entertainment activities such as watching high-definition TV, looking at family photos and listening to music.

Xbox 360 can do some of those tasks itself, and it also can function as an “extender” that links to a PC running Microsoft’s entertainment-centric
Windows XP Media Center Edition.

“In the living room itself, Xbox 360 is our centerpiece and a product that redefines what goes on there,” Gates said.”

Alice Hill: Nearly 6,000 Xbox 360 Game Systems Available for Pre-Sale on eBay. “Here comes the avalanche of Xbox 360 news. Our favorite story: the shortage is making the Xbox 360 mighty popular on eBay. You can even see for yourself. We count over 6,000 units currently up for pre-sale auction – far better than the paltry 50 units per store doled out here in San Francisco.”

Gizmodo: XBox 360, SOLD to the Boy in the Stained Shirt. “I currently have 5,000 of them in my basement and at the rate they’re going on Ebay, I can expect a tidy return on my money in the next few years. I mean look at this: a box that will sell for $199 next Christmas is going for $2000. Buy low, sell high, I always say.”

Label Life: Xbox 360 can download music, movies too. “Microsoft expects to sell $1.5 billion worth of Xbox 360 hardware and software in the first 90 days, including about 3 million consoles. Microsoft executives have said previously that they hope to sell 10 million consoles within 12 to 16 months.”

Joystiq: Joystiq’s massive Xbox 360 launch weekend blowout: the aftermath. “Whatever it is you’re looking for, chances are we’ve got you covered.”

Joystiq: Vox populi: Xbox 360 campers explain themselves. “Mike – college student: “I’m waiting outside of target greatland in the rain, for xbox 360, gonna wait about 7 more hours, and basically it’s because I’m addicted to Madden, and it looks completely insane on that system, the graphics, gameplay. I’m just gonna sit out here, and then probably just play it until I can’t play it anymore. Gonna get one game, and then play the shit out of it.””

Smash My XBox 360: “After we collect $430 in donations, we will take that money to a local unspecified retailer, which opens at 12am on the launch date. We will purchase the Xbox 360, and destroy it in front of the other Xbox fanboys who are already waiting in line. We will try to be at the very front of the line. The whole thing will be shot on film, and displayed on this site. This is only a social experiment, for the entertainment of the donors, and visitors of this site.”

hiptechblog.com: Even Paris Hilton Has Got A Xbox 360: “So much buzz around Xbox 360, please do bear with me! Along with some other stars (Black Eyed Peas, Snoop Dogg, etc) at the Hollywood Kick Off for the Xbox 360, Paris Hilton has gotten her hands on a Xbox 360!”

Gamespot News: Two 360s taken in Virginia armed robbery. “A Stafford, Virginia, Electronics Boutique store was the scene of an armed robbery this morning. According to sources, the perpetrator made off with two Xbox 360 systems, forcing the store manager to hand them over at gunpoint.”

Kotaku: XBox 360 Last Minute Buyer’s Guide. “Wal-Mart, where the devil himself shops for socks, is a pretty decent place to pick up a 360 if you don’t have
a preorder. Our sources are saying around 50 units per store total, but bear in mind those numbers tend to vary depending on the overall sales of each store. Wal-Mart’s the genital-crushing colossus of American retail, however, so Microsoft isn’t going to short them.”

MacWorld: Merrill Lynch: Users Likely to Prefer XBox360 over PS3. “The investment banker said Sony’s PS3 is an impressive machine, but the costly components inside could raise the price of a PS3 to around US$500 when it launches in the spring of 2006. By then, the Xbox 360 could be selling for US$249, Merrill Lynch estimated.”

The New York Times (bugmenot): New Xbox Goes on Sale at Midnight. Good Luck. “Microsoft is “trying to turn this into the Cabbage Patch Kids,” said Michael Pachter, an analyst with Wedbush Morgan Securities. He said he expected Microsoft to constantly publicize stories of stores that were sold out to inspire press coverage and water-cooler talk of when the next shipment would arrive. “It’s brilliant marketing.”

Todd Bishop’s Microsoft Blog: Microsoft’s Moore on XBox Supply. “”I’ve seen all of the conspiracy theories. Somewhere in Roswell, New Mexico, we have a hangar where we’re stockpiling it, creating false shortages. No. We are doing everything we can. … We’ve got people working 24-7, literally thousands of people that are trying to get as many units to retail as we possibly can. It’s a video-game console launch, demand always outstrips supply on day one and our goal is to try and catch up as quickly as possible. Put that conspiracy theory of holding back to create false supply shortages for demand ? Put it to bed. It’s ridiculous. … No, we’re not withholding inventory in any way. We wouldn’t be spending the money we’re spending on 747s as we’re currently doing, to bring them in all over the world as fast as we possibly can.””

Associated Press: Kid Get’s Jacked for New XBox. “A 17-year-old boy who was one of the first in this city to buy one of the much-anticipated new Xbox 360 video games was assaulted and robbed as he left the store, police say.

The boy was attacked by two males around 12:01 a.m. Tuesday, when stores nationwide began selling the new Xbox system. The attackers took the game valued at about $450 and fled on foot.”