Sony: "Don't worry, we will NOT sell out, we have trucks"

[MindKry]

I'd like to know the numbers involved.

How many units is the initial PS3 Slim shipment?

Will Sony cut back on orders to clear out old stock?

Are retailers stuck with old stock and waiting until that stock clears to order to new units?

I think this shift in tactics will be a boon to PS3 sales. In the end it'll be more about Sony's continued support for the Sony.

They are going to have to do a lot of bridge building in order to repair consumer confidence they've squandered with all of those initial missteps in their marketing strategy.

To quote a Kutaragi: "for consumers to think to themselves 'I will work more hours to buy one'. We want people to feel that they want it, irrespective of anything else."

This marketing strategy was doomed to fail, and when the recession hit and jobs were being lost it got worse.

MS pulled ahead not because of releasing early but because of realitic expectation, not just from their system but also from the consumer.

Sony seemed to expect the PlayStation brand would be enough to sell systems regardless of how much their consumer base would be willing to pay.

Nintendo ultimately came up with a market friendly price point, viral marketing targeting non gamers and designed games to expand their market share which they did substantially.

The reason Sony failed their system in the first few years is not because they don't have kick ass hardware. It's because they demanded too much from a consumer base which wasn't ready for such a high price point. Of course this could be because they wanted to push Blu Ray as much as possible (which worked for them).

This death rattle (the 100$ price drop) is more of an admission that they couldn't actually market this thing as purely a game system at such a high price point. The early adopters I feel the sorriest for because their 600-800$ systems are worth about 300$ now which is a reduction of about half or more of the price and in that time period so few really interesting exclusives have been released on it compared to the Xbox 360.

That and the Xbox 360's original price was 299-399$ which means a reduction of only 100$ or 25% of the price compared to the 50% of the PS3 to this date and it released a year earlier then Sony's system.

That being said the PS3 launch units will probably last longer.