5.5 Million PS3s Shipped

[omgwtfbbq]

johnlucas said:

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 your 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

if you were saying it as a reply to Taz42, then why did you quote my post, and then say I was wrong?

I never claimed Sony's viewpoint was a valid one. My argument was plain and simple: In Sony's financial report when they say "Sold" they mean "Sold to retailers".

So basically what you're telling me now is you said "You're wrong" and then proceeded to agree with everything I said?

Anyway, your ideas are still crap. Sure in theory, it's easy to track how many things are sold. But this relies on setting up an infrastructure whereby the retailers send information to Sony. This costs the retailer money, and for no purpose. Sony could foot the bill, but why? They're paying money to track their numbers, but it doesn't help them.

To Sony, as well as Nintendo and Microsoft, the retailer is their customer. They don't care (and neither do investors) whether it's sold to an end user or whether it's collecting dust on a store shelf because the retailer has already handed the money over to Sony. The only reason why the number moving matters to them is because if they move it means they get to sell more consoles to the retailer. ie, it only effects them indirectly because it effects the important figure, the amount of consoels that they have MADE MONEY ON.

Japan works just like USA. How do you think different places in Japan have different figures? Because it's a guess based on whatever data they can get. The EXACT SAME THING happens with TV and Movie ratings. You think that every time you buy a movie ticket Sony Pictures gets a memo? You think that NBC (or whatever the tv stations you have over there) can tell when you're watching your channel? Of course not, they take a small sample and guesstimate the final solution, the same way NPD/Media Create/Chart track do it. And these outside 3rd parties collect this data because people PAY THEM TO DO IT, so they know where to put their advertising dollars, etc.

The metric to determine financial success to your investors is money made, period. Here we care about the sales figures because that shows which console people are interested in, and we like to predict how the gaming market will look. But to Sony, this is a money making business (well... supposedly)