Lines At Best Buy for PS4 Today (In Stock in Stores so HURRY!)

[mutantsushi]

I don't see why Sony should have a large launch in Japan... Nintendo isn't doing anything there, MS certainly won't, so the market's theirs already.
I guess the launch date is already publicized and hyped, but they don't need to allocate a "large" amount... Have it be a soft launch, basically.
Same goes for other 'uncompetitive' markets where 360 never did well and XBone is not selling big, they can have their sales allocation safely reduced.
(markets like the UK/Australia, and possibly Brasil given the situation there with tariffs, would be ones to NOT reduce the allocation in)
The units saved can be allocated to the US market, where it actually is more competitive vs XBone, and those units will help determine early sales ratio,
which has a carry on effect for future sales given people like to buy what their friends have (especially given MS' policy restricting online gaming to XBone only)
Brasil's issue with tariffs and end-user price can only be fixed by local production, so perhaps that represents an option to raise global production levels.
Although it's plausible that Sony would seek to delay Brasil production until the next hardware revision is ready, they're rumored to want to replace the ARM chip for one.
I suspect that this gen will see more frequent hardware revisions for both Sony and MS, they are basically using standard PC hardware with designs from AMD, no reason not to follow the PC market there.