A couple of weeks ago, rumours spread from Down Under onto the Interweb - and across the globe - citing that a defect had caused EBGames in Australia to recall all of its Xbox 360 Premium consoles. Apparently, a batch of faulty HDDs had caused the hardware glitch, leading retail managers to issue the recall message to all Xbox 360 owners throughout the region.

Microsoft, probably still reeling from previous hardware criticisms, has finally spoken out to deny the Aussie recall chatter, telling CVG that, "there has been no 'recall' in Australia or anywhere else. The rumours and speculation appearing are just that - rumours and speculation."

Better late than never, GamerSquad supposes, but isn't this the same American software giant that recently denied there was any single Xbox 360 hardware problem when swamped with complaints concerning the dreaded Red Rings of Death fault? The same Redmond-based company that then admitted setting said Xbox 360 manufacturing problem right in order to decrease the number of defective machines would cost over $1 billion USD?

"There is not a single root cause of problems or systemic issue with any of the Xbox 360 consoles," Microsoft insisted back in June regarding the faulty Xbox 360. "The nature of the console itself is very complex, as it’s a consumer electronic product that contains more than 1,700 different components and 500 million transistors."

We'll keep you posted on any more developments.