| mrstickball said: 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. |
You are right. All producers of goods have to guess the demand for their product about three to six months in the future. Sony had to guess the demand at a time before the Xbox 360 got the price cut and all had to guess the demand before the crisis really emerged. I would say many electronic goods were overstocked this year by a certain margin.
So I don't really see why so many people think that bigger differences between shipped and sold volumes are so funny, at least this year. Everybody expected a normal year. Normally such goods are delivered by ship so you have to expect shipping times of more than a month. You need your goods in the shops at least one month before christmas...
I think many producers got a slight feeling of doom, when they looked at their preorder numbers and the news.
