| Linkzmax said:
And now some analysis: Glancing over all three tables and using plain old logic, it's pretty clear that the Big 3 generally "overship" in the July-Sept quarters as retailers want enough stock during the holidays to come the next quarter. Oct-Dec is a bit of a mixed bag where either shipments or sales can be higher. Again using logic, the shipments will "win" when retailers expect the console to be a hot item but it doesn't quite live up to expectations or when MS pushed enough units through to meet their 10M goal.
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This may look right in your eyes but it is simply NOT how mass manufacturing at this level works. There are many reasons why it works differently (and all of those 123456789 reasons have to do with minimizing manufacturing costs). So this is how it really works (rather simplified, taking Sony's PS3 as an example):
-At some time point before every new fiscal year, Japan headquarters wants a final table from all its regions on how many PS3's they want to buy per quarter. It is up to every region to figure out the demand in that region (using all the previous economical data, talking with all major distributors, economical forecasts, knowing what plans lay ahead for the PS3 in every quarter of the new fj, etc, etc.). The last sentence is particularly interesting because last year, when Sony announced 14mio shipping, everyone (including me) went "Whoa...never gonna happen", and in the end Sony exactly shipped 14mio units. (Actually makes me wonder what they now have in store for this time to get to 15mio units....)
-All numbers are added up and (after cross-checking with headquarter projections for consistency) manufacturing orders are sealed with the manufacturers. From that point on, everything is fixed, cast into iron, written in stone... you get the point. There is _no possibility for any changes_ now, the point of no return is crossed (unless you really wanted to make a manufacturing change which would cost a fortune).
-If some region head made a miscalculation/misestimation, some distributor goes belly-up or thinks they need more/less because the PS3 is "hot right now"/"a door stop", tough luck. There is no "Let's make a few PS3s more for that region, Let's shift some PS3s from A to B". Every region gets exactly the allotted numbers for every quarter. (Exactly that happened this calendar year in NA with a week long draught while Europe/Asia was sitting on its stock).
