Until Microsoft's Jeff Bell said there was a frickin' drought of Xbox 360s in the U.S. ("literally out of stock in many stores") I totally had no idea. I mean, my local Best Buy and Circuit City's shelves are practically overflowing with 360s whenever I drop by (especially the Halo 3 editions). Has anyone tried to buy a 360 in the last couple weeks and actually been SOL?

Why make a big to-do about this? Well, tomorrow the NPD numbers for January come out, and buried in the missives about overwhelming demand is this bit: "We think this will have an impact on our sales," Bell said. "It may cause the overall industry number to be down a little bit." We'll let you guys do the math on this one. [Reuters]

Send an email to matt buchanan, the author of this post, at matt@gizmodo.com.