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cookingyourmama on 08 July 2012
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Aielyn said:
cookingyourmama said:
The problem with your entire arguement is that it is based just on a guess as to what retailers did last year and in previous years, yet you take that guess and you try and state it as fact when in reaility it is just your opinion. You have no idea in what quarters retailers over ordered, under ordered, or got it just right, to try and claim otherwise is asinine. For all you know retailers during the same quarter last year under ordered then had to over order in the next few quarters to make up for it, when it comes down to it you have no idea, just guesses.

For example as far as anybody can see in the Dec 2010 quarter retailers/Microsoft undershipped, so in the Jan-April 2011 quarter they then had to overship to make up for it.... but then who's to say they didn't overship too much and then had to undership during the March-June Quarter? You have no idea. There's been countless quarters where Sony have had more in the retail chain, significantly more in fact, it happens and it's just part of the console retail cycle.

It's not a guess, it's an hypothesis. I opened the opportunity for you to offer an alternative hypothesis that might actually explain the change, yet you have yet to do so - your only argument is "maybe retailers under-ordered"... completely ignoring the fact that retailers aren't a monolithic, unified force - statistically, it is very unlikely that tens of thousands of retailers all under-ordered, and did so last year specifically.

And if they'd ordered too much in Jan-March, then they would have had too much stock - "supply" includes the net stock from previous oversupply. In other words, the "undership" in April-June would have renormalised the stock, not dropped it below the normal.

I'm sure there have been quite a few (far from countless) quarters where Sony have had more in the retail chain - I really don't see what bearing that has on the topic.

Now, I'm going to ask you, once again, to come up with a solid explanation for why that change would have happened, and why it only happened in 2011, and not in previous years.

As much as you want to dress it up as something else it is still just you guessing, which is nothing more than your opinion wether you like it or not.

Right i will give an example one more time, if you don't get it then that's your problem not mine.

In the October-Decemeber 2010 quarter Microsoft launched Kinect. It was a brand new never seen before piece of hardware that completely changed the game for Microsoft, it changed them from mainly appealing to just the hardcore gamer, to also appealing to the casual gamer as well. The Nintendo Wii's sales were dying, casual gamers had become bored with the system and retailers had to take an educated guess as to how much Kinect would push Xbox360's sales with both the casual and hardcore gamers. They made a guess and as it turns out they got it wrong, very wrong. Retailers heavily under ordered the 360 that holiday and by the end of December there were sell outs and the 360 was very hard to come by. Over the first few months of the following quarter retailers had to order in a record amount of 360's to not only cover there previous under ordering to get supply back up to a reasonable level but to also cover all the extra sales that quarter gained from people who wanted to buy a Kinect for Christmas but couldn't because it was sold out. For the first few months of 2011 Kinects sales were still great, however they soon slowed down and fell off the edge of a cliff due to a lack of new games being released for it and the novelty/promise of the hardware wearing off pretty quickly. Retailers for months on end were ordering in the 360 like it was the new Nintendo Wii but when the bubble burst and they realised it wasn't the new Wii they dramatically cut back on the amount they were ordering in and the knock on affect of that is maybe they took it too far again by slightly under ordered for the April-June 2011 quarter which left the amount in the retail supply chain slightly lower than previous years.

In short the introduction of Kinect a brand new piece of hardware caused a massive disruption to the 360 retail supply chain because for months on end retailers were unsure and left guessing as to how much hardware they should order in to cover this new fad. Now you don't have to a agree with me that this definitely what happened, but it is possibility at that's what you asked for.

And the reason why i brought up the PS3? As just another example of a piece of hardware being under or over ordered by retailers and at times having large amounts sat in the retail chain.