| Seinfeld said: That's not worth much to me. Wasn't there talk about The Conduit being sold out everywhere? |
The only people making those types of claims about The Conduit were those who had been trying to hype the game up to the gills.
Many retailers simply didn't order higher than usual numbers of units, treating it as any other release, which meant in some locations, initial shipments at individual retail outlets did in fact "sell out." Of course selling out when you only had a dozen units or even less on hand doesn't mean much unless subsequent shipments are larger and also continue to sell out, which is not what happened in the case of Conduit. The game was being discounted significantly by 20-30% within weeks of release by major retail outlets (including Amazon) that most likely ordered too many units relative to demand.
The 80GB PS3, on the other hand, started disappearing from retail outlets the morning of the price drop and has since been removed from the re-order inventory databases at many retailers (Targets in the SF Bay Area no longer have the SKU in their database). What that means, is that there could be a sharp drop in PS3 sales following last week/this week's numbers just prior to the release of the slim, which would demonstrate an unmet demand for a $299 PS3 if they are in limited supply until the slim launch.
As for the slim, sure; initial shipments will likely dry up quickly, but will be replaced just as quickly until lower, more consistent sales are sustained. With the amount of time SCE has had to prep for this re-launch, I have a hard time seeing prolonged shortages through the Fall as they will want to sell as many as possible as soon as possible.
GameStop hasn't "sold out" of anything in reality, considering they don't have a single unit on hand currently. What it means is that they have really just stopped selling pre-orders on units anticipating that they would not be able to honor the volume of pre-orders based on the initial shipments they will be receiving. It's a similar situation with Amazon which resorted to its usual strategy of limiting orders to keep high demand items in stock.
