My launch date X-box had its Thompson DVD-Drive go about a week before X-mas (wouldn't eject), so I went looking around the Jacksonville, FL area for one and Wal-Mart, Target, and Best Buy were all sold out (same with PS2's).
I ended up finding a Holiday Bundle Xbox at TRU, but you had to buy it with a cheap 3rd party controller and a Platinum Hits game in order to get the X-box for $189.99. Since it was my only option, I bought it and happily discovered that they rang up each item separately, so I was able to return the controller and game for the $40 credit the next day.
If you do a completed item search on "Xbox Bundle New", you'll see that people were paying in exces of $300 before X-mas due to the shortage. It seems like awfully poor planning by Micro$oft by not being able to have enough units for sale. I wonder how many people would have bought Xbox's this year if they were able to find one in the stores.