After much crowing about shipping 600K-800K units for November 8th ... Microsoft has confirmed that it has pushed back launch a week to the 15th ... now only three days ahead of GameCube's street date (GCN ships on the 15th as well).

Microsoft is also backing off of it's unit targets, now refusing to state how many units would be available at launch. This is after Microsoft has been crowing publicly about being able to build 100K a week. Clearly, the manufacturing plants are not up to capacity yet.

This isn't coming as any surprise, more of Microsoft having to face reality. It was long thought that a design flaw in the mainboard would delay the machine, but Microsoft denied that this would be the case.

Of course, this is outstanding news for Nintendo, as any bad press for Microsoft reflects positively on GameCube. When retailers are pushing Microsoft's $300 machine over Nintendo's, any hitches in the plan can make retailers lose faith.

MSNBC quotes John O'Rourke (director of XBox sales and marketing) as saying that this is unrelated to the World Trade Center attacks. "We just looked at a bunch of things and just simply said, ‘You know, Nov. 15 is going to be the right date."

It's unknown at this point how consumers will be affected. Microsoft has been pushing XBox heavily with retail POP materials, all featuring the November 8th date. With the possibility that GameCube could be in stores the day after Microsoft's launch, would consumers wait a day for a cheaper alternative?

Also, there are some very strong rumors going around that say the Xbox launch shipment has been cut. Many retailers have told The LA Times that Microsoft has told them to stop taking preorders for the Xbox all together. Sources are saying that the total launch output will be closer to 300,000, as opposed to the 600,000 to 800,000 Microsoft has stated. In fact, Microsoft hasn't even started producing the consumer hardware yet. In anticipation of the small Xbox launch, many retailers (including Best Buy, Wal-Mart, and Electronics Boutique) have contacted Nintendo and have asked to receive larger allocations of GameCube hardware for launch, said Peter Main to the LA Times. Main also stated that Nintendo is "locked and loaded" to deliver 630,000 units to the USA and 70,000 to Canada before the Thanksgiving weekend.

Mike Sklens contributed to this story.

Update: IGN XBox has updated with news of the delay as well as shipment numbers. Supposedly Microsoft is "privately addressing the concerns of retailers on a private basis regarding the changes." Considering Microsoft refusing to talk numbers at ALL, there is no way they are making allocations. Indeed, there will a be a LOT of upset customers come November.