justinian said:
binary solo said:
Interesting strategy by Sony. They are risking not being number 1 long term in USA by under supplying, but at the same time they are all but guaranteeing they will be number one almost everywhere else. Possibly only in Australia is Xb one number 1 at the moment. Ultimately being most successful globally is better for Sony, especially given Sony makes less money from hardware in the USA.
But I do wonder if Sony is spreading itself too thin. For instance here in NZ if you didn't pre-order a PS4 there is no way you're getting one before February, and I bet in a lot of markets its a similar situation. Walk-in sales for PS4 won't happen for a few months. Sony isn't selling every PS4 it ships, it's selling PS4's before they ship, before they even come off the production line. Perhaps if they stayed focused on their main 37 markets it may have been better for them at least to get through to January, and expand to the 49+ in mid January, then February in Japan. In December I would think the smart move is maximising supply into countries where Christmas is actually a big thing. Many of the 38-49 countries are not so big on Christmas, so waiting to release in January isn't a big deal. |
You make some good points but these things are hard to plan. My only guess is that they greatly underestimated the demand.
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It is clear neither company can manufacture more than 1-1.2mio units per month. Most of XBoxes will ship to NA because they need to be No1 there else they risk the Xbox part being tossed out. For Sony, they have the goal to be No1 everywhere else and keep in contact with MS in NA. If you don't have enough stock, you start to gamble. One gamble is to undersupply where you have a long list of "sure preorders" - sure preorders are people who really want the stuff and don't drop off if they have to wait a few weeks more. Instead of selling the stuff to people who are sure to get it anyways, you try to make headroom into territories where it hurts the competition the most. Hence you see NA longing for PS4 stock and UK bathed in stock, for example (and no Japan stock at all, due to no-contest there). As long as the "sure preorders" don't start to flee in droves, your gamble works.
At the end of the year, we will likely see something like XBox 2M in NA, 600-700k in Rest vs PS4 1.7M in NA, 1.5 in Rest (or higher numbers if they start to fly in last-day units right off the manufacturing plants).
