Between the lines: why would Microsoft cut shipment estimates?

1UP asked Microsoft Corporate Vice President Shane Kim about that recent shipment cut of Xbox 360 SKUs. Kim gives what can be considered the standard cookie-cutter corporate response to the press: ambiguous, never explicitly saying anything, and leaving everything else to the imagination, 90% of which might be wrong guesses anyway.

Without acknowledging the existence of anything, it’s all the standard things you have to be concerned about: You have to be concerned with what your retail inventory looks like; How you deal with your retail partners; You have to make sure there’s no customer confusion.

1UP’s theories are based on those statements. Again, none of these may turn out to be true:

• The current two-SKU sales setup is “a lot of retail,” says 1UP. It’s as though production for two sales options (Core, Premium) is saturating the 360 market already.
• To clear out current 360 inventories. But why would you want to clear out the warehouse?
• A colored Xbox? Maybe not black, but… (the way it looks from current PRs? Nah…)
• Another SKU, featuring additional capabilities like HDMI? Unless Microsoft is saving those options for Zephyr – which is the more likely option.
• A Halo 3-themed special edition Xbox 360? They did that for Halo 2 and the original Xbox…

Don’t we wish there was a Halo 3-themed special edition Xbox 360. We’d even start a letter-writing campaign just for that. Nothing confirmed about anything, though. You can trust a reposne from a PR-savvy corporate official for that.

1UP asked Microsoft Corporate Vice President Shane Kim about that recent shipment cut of Xbox 360 SKUs. Kim gives what can be considered the standard cookie-cutter corporate response to the press: ambiguous, never explicitly saying anything, and leaving everything else to the imagination, 90% of which might be wrong guesses anyway.

Without acknowledging the existence of anything, it’s all the standard things you have to be concerned about: You have to be concerned with what your retail inventory looks like; How you deal with your retail partners; You have to make sure there’s no customer confusion.

1UP’s theories are based on those statements. Again, none of these may turn out to be true:

• The current two-SKU sales setup is “a lot of retail,” says 1UP. It’s as though production for two sales options (Core, Premium) is saturating the 360 market already.
• To clear out current 360 inventories. But why would you want to clear out the warehouse?
• A colored Xbox? Maybe not black, but… (the way it looks from current PRs? Nah…)
• Another SKU, featuring additional capabilities like HDMI? Unless Microsoft is saving those options for Zephyr – which is the more likely option.
• A Halo 3-themed special edition Xbox 360? They did that for Halo 2 and the original Xbox…

Don’t we wish there was a Halo 3-themed special edition Xbox 360. We’d even start a letter-writing campaign just for that. Nothing confirmed about anything, though. You can trust a reposne from a PR-savvy corporate official for that.