There are a ton of retailers out there who have been receiving and selling Xbox 360 consoles,
but the unpredictability of the supply chain is such that nobody is really able to tell who exactly has an Xbox 360 in
stock at any given moment in time. Yet, with another 300,000
consoles expected in North America within the next 5 to 7 days, chances are strong that a little legwork
(or mousework) will net you a console in time for the big consumer holiday celebration formerly known as Christmas.
We won't endorse one retailer over another, especially not certain retailers who engaged in illegal business practices during the Xbox 360 launch and who don't deserve another gamer dime. (Though we will note that Costco is well respected for both their honesty and for their consumer-friendly return policies.)
Instead, the best recommendation we can give you is a framework for scoring an Xbox 360. There are essentially two viable options: (1) local retailers and (2) Internet retailers. You know best who your local retailers are. Take out a sheet of paper, jot down their phone numbers, and keep those numbers handy. Call them daily. Better yet: visit them daily.
Internet retailers take less work to assess. Compile a list of bookmarks for the Xbox 360 product page at various online retailers and do a clickthrough of those URLs once or twice a day. Heck, some of our readers have probably already compiled such a list and might drop them into the comments, below (hint hint!). Or you can use a notification service.
We're assuming in all of this that you're not willing to pay eBay prices for the console. At the time of this writing, the console is still selling for $700+ on eBay. That's an option if your pockets are deep and you don't mind paying someone else to do all of this legwork for you.
