Kerotan said:
And that's just shipped. |
There seems to be a lot of confusion about that number 18 in Sony's fj report.
18 Million is not a "wish target" or approximation or a "let's see if we can get there target". 18 Million is the number of PS4s being manufactured from April 1st 2017 to March 31st 2018 as per the new business plan. This 18M target was set a long time ago, components and assembly line times have been ordered a long time ago as well (and obviously some of it was already delivered/used as we are one month into the new fj.
That is simply a basic law of mass manufacturing. You must order in masses and as early as possible and leave it at that. If by the end of this year, they see the target is not met (so far, Sony has always met its targets pretty accurately so I'm pretty sure they'll get there one way or the other), there isn't much they can/should do:
a) In the case they sell way more than planned, they could manufacture more. This sounds simple, the reality is quite different. They would have to order additional components (maybe even on the spot market) and factory time on short notice. This usually leads to an increase of manufacturing costs in the 50-100% range (since towards end of the year, everything runs on max capacity anyways), and would be way too expensive to be financially feasible.
b) In the case they sell way less than planned, they could cancel component orders and manufacturing runs. The penalties for cancelling components and factory times on short order are prohibitively high so you better stockpile the surplus.
In short: 18M PS4s will be manufactured as the fj report says.
I was actually expecting to see a lower number here, around 17M. 18M still is a very high numer not far from the 20M last fj which was an extremely high bet.
