It has been a difficult holiday season for some shoppers.

The “It” gift of the year, Microsoft’s new Xbox 360 gaming console, has been flying off the shelves in countries all over the world.

It’s been happening with such speed, and the lack of systems has been so keenly felt in so many places, that some are asking:

Has Microsoft created an artificial shortage of Xbox 360 consoles? Is this deliberate?

An interesting possibility…

The Facts

When thinking about the possibility that Microsoft has intentionally shorted the public their fair share of the must-have gift of the season, it’s important to consider the complexity of the situation and how production may have run short:

– The Xbox 360 is composed of approximately 1,700 different parts

– These parts come from various manufacturers

– Each manufacturer has a different process for producing these parts

– Any one of them could encounter production difficulties which would impact the rate of production for the 360 itself

The Verdict

After examining the data, the only reasonable explanation which presents itself is that Microsoft is CLEARLY AND DELIBERATELY DEPRIVING CUSTOMERS OF 360 CONSOLES.

I put the matter to Gurp Floppewanker of the Xbox 360 team (he’s, like, Norwegian or something, and all the letters of his first name are silent).

An Interview – With the Horse and His Mouth

After listening long and hard to the evidence I presented, Gurp responded.

“Well, the cat’s out of the bag. I knew it was only a matter of time before somebody figured it out. It’s so obvious when you put it down on paper like that - all that stuff about the 1,700 parts. The truth is that we lose money on every Xbox 360 console we sell, so the smart thing to do, and I thought of this myself, was to hide all the units from the public. If we can limit the number of consoles we sell, then we can limit our losses on each unit. It’s simple economic fact.”

He then added, “That’s why I make the big bucks.”

I thought this was interesting. I prodded for more info. This time I asked about the games.

“The software? Well, that’s where we make our money, and this ties directly back to why we’re hiding the consoles. We figure that, if we can sell only the software, then this Xbox 360 thing will be pure profit.”

How do they get away with this?

“Easy. If you look at the box for any one of these games, you’ll see that nowhere does it say you will ever actually get to play it. Let the buyer beware, and all that.”

It sounded like a lot of thought had gone into this. Was there more to the story? I asked about where all the consoles were. If they weren’t on store shelves, then they had to be somewhere.

“I can’t reveal exactly where the consoles are right now, but you can trust that they are well hidden. I mean, you haven’t managed to find them after all these years, have you?

All these years? What in the hell was that supposed to mean?

“I might be telling you too much now, but, yeah, we’ve been producing the console for a little longer than the public thinks, and we’ve been having to hide the surplus all this time.”

Just how long, I asked, had this been going on?

“Well… I guess it goes back to the late 90s when we really ramped up production on these things.”

OK - The late 90s? Was he serious? And how did they manage to hide production on this scale?

Gurp smiled.

“That was one of our greater achievements. Do you remember back when Microsoft added a few thousand positions in India and other eastern countries?”

I did.

“Then get ready for the bomb – it wasn’t really India.”

Then where did these jobs go?

“Think a bit further east. Like, way east. Still west of Hawaii, but east of China. Think of a place where secrets are being kept, where there’s some shifty stuff going on...”

I thought a bit about this, and then… could it be? No – surely not!

North Korea!?

“You got it. We knew we needed deep cover for this operation, and the North Koreans were willing to cooperate with us.”

And just how did they manage that?

“Oh, we know a few people…”

After hearing this, I was ready for anything. I wanted to know what they were doing with the consoles after they were produced.

“Now you’re getting to the really tricky part. We had been stockpiling units in North Korea since production had begun, but because there were so many, we were worried they’d be spotted by spy satellites. Obviously, we had to start moving them. We checked our options, checked, and re-checked, and there was only one thing for it – we needed a large, desolate area where we could keep these things – preferably underground. We got our hookup and went to work.”

Didn’t somebody notice when they started moving billions of consoles?

“They did, actually. They did. That’s why we had to create a distraction. This would have been around early September, 2001.”

Surely he didn’t mean to imply…

“Yeah. That was us. 9/11 was our diversion. But, it goes deeper than that. While it distracted the government entities that were beginning to pick up our scent, we had another problem we needed to solve: it was getting really expensive to fly these suckers from one side of the globe to the other. We knew that, by crashing two planes on the same day, we’d be able to drop prices on air travel, which was important because we were having to use commercial airliners to transport a lot of these systems. That was a mess all its own because we had to disguise each 360 as a box of mung-bean confections. It worked, though.”

Wow. And where were these consoles going?

“Like I said earlier, I can’t divulge this detail, but we have a partner out yonder whose name rhymes with ‘Rosama Rin Raden,’ and he’s been crucial in keeping these vast stores of consoles underground.”

North Korea was one thing, but how did they manage to set this one up?

“Do you remember hearing rumors of huge shipments of consoles going to the Middle East? The assumption was that corrupt rulers were using these consoles instead of regular computers to run their networks and power their tyrannical empires.”

I could see where this was going…

“It turns out they weren’t just rumors. We were able to cut this deal by offering the man whose name rhymes with ‘Rosama Rin Raden’ a special deal, entitling him to several million consoles for his own purposes, which was just a mere grain of sand against the sheer quantity of units he would be hiding for us.”

It wasn’t my intention to get tangential, but I just had to know – with the tight security measures on the box meant to thwart hackers, how was the man whose name rhymes with “Rosama Rin Raden” supposed to get anything done with these consoles?

“We knew way ahead of time that we’d have to work with the corrupt to get this done, so we created a secret application that you can get to from the 360 dashboard. It’s called ‘iBad,’ and if you’d like to see it, then press Up, Up, Down, Down, Left, Right, Left, Right, B, A, B, A, Start.”

To get the interview back on track, I asked him how they had managed to evade international security forces up to this point.

“It took some clever maneuvering, but we managed. We knew President Bush would be malleable, which is part of the reason we put him into office.”

Wait – now you’re taking responsibility for getting Bush into office?

“Duh. Do you remember who wrote components of the software that were used in the voting process? Let’s just say that there were a couple back doors we exploited to, uh, shall we say, have our way with things.”

Again, wow.

“Anyway, to continue, we got Bush into office because he’s a real pudding head, and I mean that in the nicest way, and we knew he would be easier to manipulate than other presidents we’ve ‘worked with.’ Of course, Bush never really knew what was going on, and that’s where having one of our men on the inside to deliver false intelligence reports really came in handy. Again, this was an advantage we gained through having access to the software.”

What you’re saying, then, is that all the recent apologies given by Bush about the bad intelligence - that was you, too?

“That was us, too. They were getting too close, so we threw them off the trail by shifting the focus onto Hussein rather than the man whose name rhymes with ‘Rosama Rin Raden.’”

I was impressed.

To summarize, then, the Xbox 360 team wasn’t just responsible for an artificial shortage, but also the following:

– Conspiring with the North Koreans

– 9/11

– Getting Bush into office illegally

– Providing the hardware to run the worldwide terrorist network of the man whose name rhymes with ‘Rosama Rin Raden’

– The bad intelligence leading to a war in Iraq

It sounded like a busy few years, and I said so.

“Yeah. We’re all looking forward to a little R&R here pretty soon.”

Was there anything else he wanted to say?

“Just that I’m glad I had this chance to clear the air. It feel good to get all of that off my chest, and it was only a matter of time before everybody found out anyway. The public is really much more intelligent than we give them credit for – they managed to uncover that there was a huge orchestrated and artificially created shortage of consoles. If I hadn’t given the details here, then someone would have figured it out and posted it to slashdot or something. So, thanks - thanks for the opportunity to bring all of this out in the open”

It was my pleasure, Gurp.

It was my pleasure…