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thismeintiel on 08 February 2011
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Michael-5 said:
thismeintiel said:

MS, just like Sony, can only ship as much as retailers are willing to buy.  Now, there may have been 360 shortages in early Jan for America, but if VGCs numbers are any indication, it looks like they have sorted them out in the past few weeks.

VGC says Sony shipped 2.30 million more PS3's in 2010 then 360's, but the difference in units sold is 790k. Shortages started mid december, and MS asked retailers to sell their January/February stock in order to meet holiday demands. Thus the week ending January 1st we already see shortages significant;y affecting sales.

MS can only ship as much as retailers are willing to buy, correct, but if they can't ship as many units as retailers request, then the difference in the number of units shipped will be misleading.

Sony outshipping 360's despite not selling as many PS3 units can only be attributed to two factors. An expected major jump in hardware (1.5 million if they were to sell as many units in relation to units shipped as MS), or MS experiencing shortages. Since MS specifically have outspoken and sent a message to reatialers about shortages, and seeing the holidays ending, I think the second case is in reality whats happening.

So if you add 1.5 million (as stated above, the difference in the number of PS3's shipped - sold compared to MS) to the number of shipped 360's. Then the shipped difference would be 4.38 million, which would imply MS is growing the gap between the 360 and PS3, and this is verified by stronger 360 hardware sales, despite the ongoing shortage (MS said until at least February, 360's will still be seeing shortages).

What it seemed you are suggesting is that MS needs to just ship more consoles to help pull away from Sony.  What I am saying is that retailers have to order those consoles for MS to ship them, just like Sony.  Yes, MS started having shortages in January due to increased demand during the holiday season, but it was not a WW issue.  Only in a few regions, and mostly America.  But the shortages that MS were seeing in Jan will not affect 2010's results.  If anything it helped them because they had to ship more from their projected Jan shipment.  Plus, since MS was expecting the shortages to be straightened out by Feb (and the weekly sales in America suggest they pretty much already had by the end of Jan) then the only thing it will affect is seeing a larger shipment number in their Jan-Mar financial report.  Again, that increased number is not going to be a mil or more than what Sony posts in its financial report.