PS3 Seeing Stronger Pent-Up Demand, Shortages Possible, says Analyst
Since Sony dropped the price on PS3 to $299, launched the new model PS3 Slim and kicked off an appealing new marketing campaign, sales have really picked up, both here (up 300% at top retailers) and overseas. In fact, according to Sterne Agee analyst Arvind Bhatia, PS3 hardware appears to be ahead of market expectations this month.
"Our channel checks show that PS3 hardware sales remained strong in the second week of September following very strong sales in the first week of September. The first week of September saw a 300% lift at top retailers according to Sony. Our checks suggest stronger pent-up demand than expected. We now believe PS3 hardware sales in September have the potential to be up as much as 75% y-o-y versus our most recent upwardly revised expectation of +50% y-o-y. We believe this is stronger than market expectations," he said.
If Bhatia's right, some consumers could even have some difficulty finding the PS3 by the end of the month - a stark comparison to the post-launch months when PS3 boxes were sitting, collecting dust on store shelves. "We believe PS3 sales for the month of September could be up even more than our estimate of +75% depending on supply. Our contacts indicate that while PS3 supplies are currently normal there is risk of shortages by the end of this month," he said.
Not only is Sony gaining some steam going into the holiday season, but Bhatia indicated that PS3 sales do appear to be eating into Xbox 360 sales - music to Sony's ears no doubt. "In contrast to the PS3, our checks show that hardware sales of Xbox 360 have shown only a slight lift of around 5% to 10% following its recent price cut. We attribute this to the fact that Microsoft’s lower priced Arcade model remained unchanged in price at $199 while the Elite model, while lowered by $100, really just replaced the Pro Model (which is being phased out) at $299. In addition, given our checks on the PS3, it does appear that the PS3 is picking up some share at the expense of the 360," he said.
We're going to be very curious to see what NPD's September figures show us next month. It's going to be an interesting battle this holiday for sure.
