360 shortages & game delays related?

As many of you know, i read a CRAP LOAD of Xbox 360 information a day. It's a bit of an addiction. After reading over more and more information about block buster games being held back, I have come up with a theory. To give you some background on this theory, Microsoft's head chief Ballmer has said they can't build enough boxes because the processors aren't readily available. He goes on to say that by March, things should be looking much better and that they had even considered delaying the launch due to processor shortages. We then come to see that most of the anticipated 360 exclusive titles, Gears, GRAW, Oblivion all slipped out of the launch window once shortage rumours started. Now in close timing to admitting the processor shortage, all these great titles have now also slipped to March when 360's should no longer be in short supply.

Given the amount of money it now takes to make a truly next gen title, I'm sure these guys want the most return for their development, who wouldn't. So why release a great game now when your market reach is so small considering there are only 300-400,000 360's at launch in the USA compared to millions of Xbox's.

Instead why not push off the release date to have more time to polish the game and release it to a larger potential market. These 3 titles are going to be the first ones to really show off the 360's graphic power so the dollar amount to make them is going to be quite a bit higher than an xbox game. Plus they're exclusives so they can only make their return off the 360 market.

So would it be far fetched to say that the delays and the console shortages are really going hand in hand? Could also be a reason why there's nothing decent coming out now between launch and March. This would give game makers even more time to polish games and fix any possible bugs. After all, we know that one bad game can spell bankruptcy for a studio. What do you think?

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