They obviously meant… er… somewhat well when they decided to simultaneously release the Xbox360 across many markets, far earlier than it was really fully tested and before it was in large enough quantities to even match the tightly constrained PS2 launch 5 years earlier. In their eagerness to beat the PS3 to market and to get the system out before christmas they have effectively Grinched the US games market for christmas.
EA and Activision have both reported drastic shortfalls from their expected sales of both Xbox 360 and games from previous generation consoles. With less than a half million Xbox360’s out there and around 4.5 million people who were expecting one for christmas and will be unable to get them, there’s a ton of hardcore gamers out there that are holding onto their cash and not buying games for christmas this year. Hopefully microsoft will learn from this and not release their next console in November again. Sony and Sega both tended toward August and September releases which seems to have served them well in the past…