Well, if it is supply constrained those are some sad shipments Sony has been sending.

PS3s aren't produced and shipped in a day. It takes weeks to go from initial order to them reaching the shops. Sony also has to honour previous orders. Why would a shop in the UK willingly lose its order, just so that some shop in the US can get their PS3s early. It just doesn't work like that. It also comes down to separate sections of Sony. If SCEA only ordered x million for the Fiscal Year 2010, then they will go low on units if they hit that target early. That is the way business works.

Also "severly overstocked" in the Europe can't be assessed by looking at one shop. I know that many in my area (more than your 1 shop) have been low on/out of stock since Christmas. I'm not going to say that means all of Europe is low on stock though, but there are certainly areas even in the "severely over-stocked" European region that are suffering shortages.

Again i think your missing the point. It is not very complicated.

If Sony have had a supply problem in one region (in this case US) they can divert stock from one region to another. This is how selling works, they even came up with a business term for it called "supply and demand". If one area is in dire need of a product the company normally try's to lower production for one area to meet the demand of another. It is as simple as that.

What we see here and by the accounts of others there are stock in abundence. This is nothing new, people have been saying it for months now. I guess it takes months to build mass manafactured products right?

The last time I went to my Wal-Mart there was one 250GB PS3 that's it.

I suppose if your area dictated the market trends you might be right. However, where I live (Roanoke, VA, USA) there are three Walmarts, a Best Buy, a Target, and at least 4 game stops. While I cannot speak on behalf of all of those stores, I can speak that the Gamestop nearest me only have refurbished systems, two of the three Walmarts are out of stock, and the Best Buy never has them. However in all of those retail locations, each of them are fully stocked with 360's and Wii's, all of which are in plain sight of the consumer. To say the least the demand for Wii and 360 is seeing a decline in at least my area.

The stores around here are pretty well stocked.

PS3 has been supply constrained since the PS3 Slim was launched late Aug to early Sept last year.. The manufacturers can not keep up with the large demand for the PS3. PS3 gap to 360 must be smaller than what it is on the site. shipment figures of PS3 back in April showed that the PS3 was only 4.5 million behind the 360. PS3 is selling more than the 360 at the moment and it must be under tracked.

15 million PS3s sold for the year will be a lock in. 360 will be lucky to sell 9 million sales this year.

(UK)- In March slims were hard to find in my area, I was hunting for a one after my 60 gigger bought the farm. I went to 5 places in total, 4 of them had no PS3's at all, 120 or 250. One did have a 250GB available which I bought. (No 120's) I don't know how things are now though.

every store around here has at least 2 or 3 ps3s in stock.

A buddy of mine had his PS3 die on him last week, he got YLOD.

Anyways he then went and picked up a 120GB Slim and he told me that he had to check 6+ stores before he finally found a place that had them in stock.