Rocky Road for Xbox 360 Launch

In just a few weeks’ time, [Microsoft] will unleash its great white hope of gaming, the Xbox 360, across the world. But rolling out a next generation games console in the US, Europe and Japan virtually simultaneously is proving to be a greater challenge than anyone imagined.

"There’s a reason no-one has done this before and we are figuring that out," said Xbox marketing boss Peter Moore. "If we knew what we were getting into, we might not have done it," he admitted at a recent Xbox event in Amsterdam.

In the past console makers have staggered the release of a new machine, like Sony did with the PlayStation Portable. The device first saw the light of day in Japan, three months later in the US and almost a year later in Europe.

BBC News