Update: Blaze clarifies NeoGeo X Gold Christmas stock situation

Update: Blaze told me this morning there will be enough NeoGeo X Gold stock for everyone who has already pre-ordered, plus "a limited stock beyond that to cover orders up to Christmas".

"We will have stock to fulfil all outstanding pre-orders and all orders placed throughout the holiday period," the spokesperson told me.

Original story: The NeoGeo X Gold retro gaming console didn't arrive on 6th December like I was told at the end of October it would.

The official UK retailer Funstock still lists the release date as "TBC (expected December 2012)" so what's going on?

I asked Blaze - the European distributor - the same question.

"Blaze and all our European distributors are collecting our stock this weekend from Asia and shipping it over Christmas to all our customers," Blaze boss Jason Cooper told me, later specifying 27th/28th December as a likely landing date.

"In the UK, Funstock are our exclusive retailer for the Christmas season and they wrote to everyone to tell them 10 days ago when they would be getting theirs, so everyone who has placed an order is 100 per cent in the loop.

"Tommo [the US distributor] released the first of their stock in the US version the day before yesterday, they have totally sold out and this has been a great boost for us in Europe as it has reviewed very well and our web sales went absolutely crazy yesterday. I have not seen anything like it before."

He added: "I have received feedback today that all our distributors in Europe have now pre-sold all their stock. We have kept a quantity back for the New Year, but expect, ourselves, to be totally sold out early January."

There haven't been any PR trumpets sounding because Blaze was doused by the GameGadget experience, which featured a PR campaign that went all wrong. I investigated all of this on Halloween, coincidentally enough.

"We learnt a lesson from GameGadget," Cooper said. "This time we are doing it totally organically and the product is doing the talking.

"As it is a Limited Edition we are letting the product be the focus for the first wave of stock and that means that we can communicate directly with all our end users and distributors alike."

A "stronger" marketing campaign is roughly planned to kick off in Easter and run through to the end of 2013.

The NeoGeo X Gold retro console thingymajig is actually three devices: the main handheld, a dock that's a replica of a NeoGeo and a proper arcade stick for docked TV play. 20 NeoGeo AES games are pre-loaded.

Cost: a not inconsiderable £175.