It's sounding like Microsoft might have gotten too enticed by the idea of beating Sony and Nintendo to market for the next generation game console - there's the shortage of units, and some reports of hardware trouble:

Gamers' enthusiasm for the newly released Xbox 360 quickly waned after the first reports were posted online of problems with the machines crashing and overheating.

No word yet on how widespread the problem actually is, or what, if anything Microsoft plans to do about it.

Depending on two things - the actual size of the problem - and - more importantly - their response - this could end up doing them more harm than good. Microsoft has seen plenty of ham handed PR (Dell, Sony) recently - let's see if a big company knows how to respond.