It's possible? 8.5mil+ PS4s sold by 31/MAR

[mjk45]

ICStats said:

ethomaz said:

ICStats said:

You missed the point.  Shipping units by sea takes time, let's say 2 weeks to make it round.

Produce 350k by Nov 25 -> Deliver week of Dec 9
Produce 350k by Dec 2 -> Deliver week of Dec 16
Produce 350k by Dec 9 -> Deliver week of Dec 23
Produce 350k by Dec 16 -> Deliver week of Dec 30
Produce 350k by Dec 23 -> Deliver week of Jan 6
Produce 350k by Dec 30 -> Deliver week of Jan 13
etc.

Now, in order to boost supply in December what they can do is air-ship two weeks supply so that it arrives ~2 weeks early, so that instead of delivering 4*350k they deliver 6*350k in December (1.4 million by sea and 0.7 million by air).

It's rumored that they did that in order to give that big boost in Dec, and if that's the case it would take away form the delivery in January, so we could have them deliver only say 700k~1050k in January.

Air-ship didn't make magic... they need some days yet to ship the product even with air-ship... ~5 days... 2 weeks vs 5 days... I don't see that much difference that will create a lack in suppy in January.

They will have ~1m units in stores in January.... that won't change.

Ignoring loading time & customs, the travel time from China to US West coast by cargo ship is 11 days, and then you have shipping time to and from some port.  If it's final destination is the East cost then it will take a lot longer.  A plane can fly the same to West or East coast in less than 1 day.

More so, from China to the UK it takes longer by cargo ship, more like 3 to 4 weeks.

They could have used the strategy of shipping more by ship to the US, and shipping to Europe by air.  Especially, China to UK is much closer by air than China to USA.  Either way, introducing air shipping will have moved some supply from January into December.

Don't take my word for it though, this is just a possibility to consider.

On the history of the Playstation , Kaz talks about how during the PS2's NA launch they decided to airlift a couple of weeks of extra stock to help with high  demand , it really is something they only consider to do on launch as it just gives them a little more breathing room until a full shipment arrives , also they have to absorb the extra cost .

 To it's impact on the next shipment it depends on where they got the stock from , iirc the ps2 stock came straight from the factory in Japan and wasn't  culled from warehouses since all earlier stock was in transit , since the stock was from what would be a further shipment it wouldn't have arrived after the rush so taking some of it wouldn't cause to much of a shortage down the line. So they might have considered something along the same lines for the PS4.