[Eiji]

According to eBay president and CEO Meg Whitman, a staggering 40,000 Xbox 360 consoles have been sold on eBay.

As reported by Dow Jones last night based upon a presentation at the CSFB Annual Technology Conference, the 40,000 unit figure has left pundits flabbergasted. If launch supply estimates from American Technology Research are accurate, that would mean that 10% of all Xbox 360 consoles sold in the US were either sold or resold through eBay.

Exactly what's to be done about the reselling and marking up (or as some rumors would have it, the direct sale of units from some unscrupulous retailers and/or distributors) is completely unknown. Microsoft certainly can't take action against resales and tracking diverted goods from legitimate channels is difficult at best.

It's probably fair to say that eBay will continue to be a channel that's exploited by people at every hardware launch. About the only solution is to provide so much stock at launch that the opportunities for markup are fairly slim (and we all know that's never going to happen).

Source: http://www.next-gen.biz/index.php?op...=1779&Itemid=2

Holy crap, thats near enough as much as the total UK allocation!

[scoo]

Pisses me off! You've just got to love fleabay entrepreneurs though...