Yes, it is.

And when they do they are less likely to get a PS4 because of the mandatory PSN+ fees.

kowenicki said: by the way look at that game tag... versus 13...

lol, that was actually really clever.  xD

Ohhhhh the irony.

Have the console in stock won't change the mind of the these first buyers... you know that... who is buying the PS4 and One right now already have the mind made... they are gamers that knows what system they want when they go to stores... the numbers of guys that go to shop and buy a console instead other because one was in stock and other not at the launch period is tiny.

Personally, I think it is better to launch in less countries then more, especially if your competitor is not available in those countries either. If you launch in the other countries later, you are going to get those sales anyway. But like people have already pointed out, if you are out of stock, you risk losing a customer (and a sale) forever. Ideally, you should launch a week or two prior to your competitor to get that jump start, but that is probably all you need. In my opinion, launching a month or two earlier is not going to earn you loyalty or PR to sway customers from the competition.

I have a feeling that Sony did not expect to get the number of sales that they have, so they made launch plans globally. This way they could keep the factories turning out 2 million consoles monthly and keep adding territories to maintain demand.

But the "first buyers" are probably the first million in sales.  After that, you start getting the parents that know next to nothing about consoles, but know that their kid wants a new one.  The sales rep at the local electronics store will just sell them whatever they have in stock, and they won't know any better until their kid opens it up on Christmas day.  I don't think the number of these cases is tiny.

To be honest i hope so, but little by little microsoft is shrinking the gap in those market, as a result, increasing my concern of losing those market in the same proportion at this gen.

so far sony has a production advantage of 500k for as far as we know now.
the amount of countries launched in hasn't been a factor yet

The key to success will be not now, when consoles are selling out but in April and demand can easily be reached.

Well I guess these casual units are few... most units are yet in the preorders queue and the guys that make the lines at BestBuy, Gamestop, etc to buy consoles are guys that have already made his mind.

In US the stores yet have mid-night lines to buy these consoles. The loyal userbase is way bigger than 1 million.

BTW even if Sony foucused in US only right now they will have 2 million sold in US with SOLD OUT too... and guess what? The people that bought the 2 million was again fans that already made his mind... the changes to a casual guy find a console in US right now is below 5%.

I think if Sony matched the 13 territories that MS launched in they had a chance to crush them early seeing as most say their demand is higher. I think this is true especially in the US where fans are a bit more fickle then other territories. MS knows they were going to have an uphill battle in the "Others" region so they decided to cater to their strong suit first. I think if Sony's plan was just to get the console out to everyone they would've launched in Japan already.