Dark_Feanor said:
Overshipping is a wast of money, time and resources. Companies spend money trying to predict how the sales will behave and how to have a safe margin of units. Off corse they could be wrong. Microsoft had this kind of problem with the first Surface and had to writgh down a 900mi loss in that quarter. But I think it´s hard to be wrong for 3 quarters in a row, without severe consequences. Even Nintendo predicting almost 3x more WiiU sales last year they end up shipping a volume close to the final demand. This whole discossion over the WiiU and XOne sales is basic based on number we don´t know for sure. Other than shippment number we only have USA and Japan markets (and some times a glimps of major European market). I´m realy interested in knowing why the WiiU (and the PS4 even) is doing so well in Europe and the XOne doing so bad. When the situation in the USA and Japan are clearly defined: USA price, Japan lack of games. |
I`m no business expert, but isn`t it possible that that they could simply be shipping ahead of time as a precautionary measure. The console market has changed dramatically in the past few years, so it can be hard to read. Shipping costs could simply be deducted from future budgets, recovering profit in the mid-term. Significant overshipment should not happen again once we`re further into the Xbox One`s lifecycle as a clearer trend will have developed. In any case, it`s not as if the Xbox division is large enough to point that mistakes will severely affect the company.
I`m think the Wii U has been a fair bit overtracked these past few weeks in Europe, but I think it would make sense that the Wii U is above the Xbox One. The PS3 had a siginificant adavantage over its competitor in Europe and this advantage has strengthened with the PS4. With the PS4 being pitted primarily against the Xbox One, I don`t think it`s too difficult to believe that the PS4 could be eating out of Xbox One sales to the point where they`re lower than that of the Wii U
