No shortages of either console here. Seems to be a US/North America problem. Perhaps Sony aren't able to produce the quantities of NTSC versions of the machines that demand seems to be needing. They only have a limited number of factores that can produce the hardware, and they need to prioritise production. I imagine there's probably only one PS2 factory still running.
PS2 sells about equal amounts of NTSC vs. PAL units (slightly more PAL units). PS3 sells a lot more PAL units than NTSC units (93K vs 78K in the most recent chart) at the moment, and during the holidays the difference was even greater. Perhaps Sony diverted production to PAL to meet short term demand differentials, and they didn't quite normalise production proportions in time to keep the America's momentum going and account for the PAl territories proportionally faster reduction in demand. Sony might have found they are overstocked in PAL units and understocked in NTSC units. That would be a big embarassment for someone if true. Stumble number 23 for Sony this generation.
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