Correct me if I'm wrong but:
When a company, any company, is producing a product - Nintendo, MS, Sony - they have to work with manufacturers well in advance of when the product is actually being built, and sold. This is to ensure all parts needed for the system (in the case of the PS3, there are ~2,800 components) are in stock so the actual console can be built.
Because of this, there is a very large lead time on parts orders, to ensure proper ramp-up of production in the Holiday months.
So if Sony mis-calculated PS3 demand...Guess what? That means there's a larger gap. When the parts were ordered, I'd tend to think that:
1) The PS3 was selling very well, and had a massive YoY increase vs. last year
2) The economic recession wasn't nearly as prevelant as it was in Q2-3 vs. Q4.
So I must ask: Given the lead time on console manufacturing, what incentive would Sony of had to underestimate demand?
Likewise, the same problem rings true for electronics distributors. They knew the PS3 was selling much better than last year, and they had to place their orders in advance too (the distributors, not the individual retail outlets)...They follow the 2-point argument as well.
Manufacturing and sales don't happen in a bubble. Here's a great article from TGDaily concerning the manufacturing of Lite-On DVD drives for the Xbox 360:
http://www.tgdaily.com/content/view/38888/139/
Looking at the article, it was made in August, and projecting shipments of 5 million DVD drives for X360's during the holiday quarter. This would mean to me that they had a good idea what MS was wanting, and had to prepare to produce the drives - 3 months before the holidays actually hit.
Back from the dead, I'm afraid.
