PS4 and ONE. The wisdom of 33 countries versus 13.

[A_C_E]

drkohler said:

A_C_E said:

Think of it like this people. If you were Sony, would you rather meet demand and sell 10 million in NA through January or would you rather be supply constrained due to units being shipped out to another country that can't buy an Xbox One anyway? I would rather meet demand in the biggest market where my competitor is and then move onto the next countries where demand will be pent up.

You are falsely assuming that either company has the manufacturing capacities to make enough PS4/XBox Ones to meet demand. That is very obviously not the case (we can safely assume 5-10% of current users want the new stuff right away). Right from the start, both companies knew they would not have enough consoles out way into 2014, given both can manufacture around 250k units a week. With the investors on their backs, MS is more or less forced to flood fill NA with its consoles to look good, while Sony tries to secure "owned" territory and make headways into MS territory. As long as both sell what they make, there will roughly be a constant gap, coming from who started earlier with manufacturing.

If either company had wanted to outsell the competitor by a mile, it would have cut their old console manufacturing in favour of their new consoles. That does not seem to have happened. As like every year, there are sh*ttons of cheap X360 $199 bundles available, and a smaller pile of expensive $329 PS3 bundles (even $399 color PS3s), at least over here. Sony obviously needs the money from the PS3s to finance the PS4, MS must have a good reason, too to continue with their customary XMas season blowouts.

Actually my post was based upon the fact that each company would be/is supply constrained. I know I said, "Meet demand and sell 10 million" but I meant it figuratively, I don't actually know how many units it would take to reach demand. My point was simply that Sony could have waited to ship consoles into other territories and just shipped to NA/UK where you would do the most damage to the competition. Whenever there's a time that the PS4 is sold out, each consumer will have the option of buying an Xbox One instead. Xbox One doesn't have that advantage in the 20 other countries that PS4 is available in. Yes PS4 is gaining ground in those territories but its ground that would have been gained anyway when it released there before the Xbox One. The only difference? Much more supply at hand once NA meets demand. And again, I'm not stating that I know the demand of the PS4, just that I know it is in huge demand.

And I never said anything about 360 or PS3, you don't have to stop selling the PS3 or 360. I'm not talking about Sony's manufacturing pace, I'm talking about Sony's launch date allocations.

I'm not saying Sony doesn't know what they're doing, I'm just analyzing and giving ideas about what Sony could have done differently.