5.5 Million PS3s Shipped

[johnlucas]

omgwtfbbq said:

 

Sure. Look, I usually agree with everything you say, but you are completely wrong here. Let's look at two scenarios:

1) Sony, follows your scenario. They count everything they sell to the retailers. They then call EVERY SINGLE RETAILER IN THE WORLD, asking them how many PS3's are sitting on shelves. They then sutract one number from the other and come up with an accurate number of consoles sold to consumers. They come up with a number (3 million) and give that to their investors. There's a reason why NPD takes two weeks to get their data, it's a lot of hard work, and they're only tracking one country, they don't even track all of it, and they GET MONEY FOR IT.

2) Sony calls retailers their customers, and just counts how many they sold to retailers, which of course they know since they have control over it. They release a larger number (looks better to their investors), and since they had to do a lot less work they get to take an early lunch.

I'm sorry, but scenario 1 is ridiculous. Sony's customer is the retailer, not the end user.

...

Hang on, the second half of your post is basically agreeing with me, saying the numbers Sony released as their number of PS3's sold were actually sold to retailers and not consumers...

What's your point?

I just wrote it out for Taz42. I KNOW that's how Sony counts their figures. What I'm saying is that it's bullshit.

The retailer is the middleman. And it's not really hard to do this if they wanted to. All they have to do is ask if shipment has been totally sold out. And that number represents true sales.

Sony may 'call' their retailers customers but that's actually crap. Who are we? Chopped meat? It's not hard at all to count this but the refusal to care about such things speaks to how the company views you who should be the most important part of the commerce chain. Without the END BUYER none of these other guys exist!

"Looks better to their investors." Exactly. And that's the whole problem. Fudging numbers to hoodwink and confuse and dazzle and mesmerize. NPD is worthless and they won't even release the numbers without a fee.

You wanna a real easy way to do this? Just have the barcode input count as the sale. When it passes the register with money exchanged that's a sale. Computers record the data and send it direct to the companies. Voila!

Hard to track, my ass. Japan does this every week. Actual numbers. No one has to dig through tomes of guesstimates and estimated figures. They TELL you what's been sold because that crap doesn't fly over there. Different mentality. They pride themselves on their national businesses and want to know EXACTLY how good or how bad they're doing in the market to make better decisions.

The fact that this site exists explains how little companies think of their customers. The fact NPD numbers are secret lets you know how they think we don't matter in the scheme of the commerce chain. We're just sheep to be herded and I hate that attitude. We should know EXACTLY what's being sold and how well the things are doing to make wiser purchasing choices.

We know box office don't we? We know TV ratings don't we? There's no reason we shouldn't know game sales. And it can be tracked like any thing else in this world.

I don't care what they do and I know the logic behind what they do. I'm saying it's BS. Don't brag about cargo you're stuffing on the shelves of a store and making that big news. That thing could take months to move and that means nothing to me who has to buy it. You brag about what people are USING. Anybody can ship an assload anywhere. That's not talent.

The metric you determine success is how many customers are buying and enjoying your product and nothing more. SOLD means END USER. The whole commerce chain rests in the hands of the end user. And don't you ever forget it.

John Lucas