EB Games shoots down rumours of $10 million feud with Microsoft

EB Games has crushed rumours that the retailer is "at war" with Microsoft over AUD 10 million worth of defective home consoles, calling reports "99 per cent bullshit".

A report on gaming blog Kotaku AU supposedly from a source within EB Games Australia stated that the company had been left with AUD 10 million worth of Xbox 360's after taking them on behalf of customers looking to return faulty units to Microsoft.

It then suggested that Microsoft had refused to take the stock from EB Games, and also noted that a shortage of Premium Xbox 360's available from the retailer was also evidence that there were serious issues between the two companies.

But EB Games chief executive Steve Wilson has crushed the rumour by telling The Sydney Morning Herald, "It's 99 per cent bullshit really."

A lack of Premium units was simply due to strong demand over the Christmas period said Wilson, with consoles from other manufacturers also in short supply.

"If you go into our stores now you can't buy a Wii, you can't buy a DS, you can't buy a Pro 360, but you can buy an Elite or an Arcade 360," he said.

He suggested that AUD 10 million was an absurd figure, and even when there had been problems with a particular batch of Xbox 360 stock due to the well publicised 'red rings of death' issue, numbers were still relatively low.

"Even when we had the batch problem six months ago, we were talking about a couple of thousand units."

"AUD 10 million is 25,000 units — that's a ridiculous number," he said.