Feature: O Xbox 360, Where Art Thou? Subscribe to this RSS feed

The Xbox 360 is out . . . but where the heck is it? If you didn't pre-order your sexy new Microsoft console months ago, you may just be out of luck come this holiday season. But, keep your chin up; there may just be hope for you yet!

Let's face it--the Xbox 360 is in short supply. In fact, unless you camped out at a retailer or pre-ordered your console months ago, chances are you don't have a shiny new system to play this holiday season. To see just how scarce the Xbox 360 is, today I called a number of game retailers in the San Francisco Bay Area to see just how long it will be before I could walk into a store and pick one up from the shelf.

Unfortunately, the results weren't too encouraging.

First off, there's the issue of pre-orders. Most specialty retailers--such as Gamestop and EB Games --weren't able to fulfill their entire stockpile of pre-orders. This means that any newly-arriving Xbox 360s will be automatically allocated to those pre-order consumers. Translation: if you didn't pre-order, you're not a priority.

The problem is, most folks didn't pre-order. So when will you be able to walk in, sans pre-order, and buy an Xbox 360 off the shelf? Most stores we called gave estimates of "walk in" purchases being a reality in mid-to-late January. Some stores even bumped their predictions to early February...which, if accurate, would be over three months after the Xbox 360 launch.

Is there any chance to nab an Xbox 360 before Christmas hits? Well, the best bet would probably be keeping careful tabs on retailers that don't allow pre-orders, such as Best Buy, Target, and CostCo. But then again, those retailers are strictly dependent on how many systems are actually shipped to them, meaning very few systems could actually be found on shelves. Either way, if you're seriously looking to get an Xbox 360 before February, you'd best start scouring your local retailers now.

Either that, or you could hop on to eBay and pay out the nose. The next generation of gaming is here, so get your wallets ready!