NATO said:
Wiiu had lines of people waiting at most stores months after release because stock limitations meant people couldn't easily order one online. Vita sold through 85+% of its stock at launch and I'm some prefecture people were still waiting to buy one several months after the launch. PS4 launched with many major stores selling out and resupply was relatively slow for the first several months because sonys focus was and still is the US markets, Akihabara Bic camera for example did not have stock sat on shelves available for purchase until summer. PSVR sold out its entire stock on pre-orders alone and has had virtually no restock since, the majority of stock went to the US, each and every time PSVR stock is made available in Japan it sells out in minutes. PSP stock also sold out in a similar manner. Consoles releasing and being hard to find and/or causing queues is nothing new for Japan, it has happened often with repeated instances for the same consoles within the first six months of their release, it has been that way all the way back to the console that released shortly after I moved to Japan, the Sega Megadrive. The only consoles that has ever been freely available nationwide from launch are Xbox consoles, the first was available without issue everywhere, same for the 360, same for the Xbox one. To explain to you just how different the Japanese market treats Microsoft, in September last year, I bought a brand new, sealed Xbox one in a major Tokyo electronics store, so September 2016. And it was a day 1 edition., a fucking day one edition more than two years after launch. Perhaps you think I'm trying to make a point that the switch isn't selling well, and if you think that then you are mistaken, the switch is selling just fine, and no doubt would be selling even better if they didn't have the stock issues. But acting like people queuing in Japan is an identifier of its popularity is fucking stupid, because it doesn't gauge it's popularity any better than if there were no lines. Think about it, big lines are because it's hard to find, this despite big lines the sales are low. Conversely if there were no lines then it would stand to reason that there was not supply issues, and people could just easily buy one, in that instance no lines would mean higher sales. So like I said, the lines don't mean shit, it's japan, it's what they do and what they have always done. He'll I've lived here since April of 1988, worked In retail for a major electronics retailer for many years, and have spent the past 12 as a hardware engineer developing gaming peripherals, I'm in these stores practically every other day taking performance data that we use for focus testing new products so I get to see it all first hand, the queues, the stock levels, the forced pricing, all of it. So I'll just leave it at that. |
Wii U had lines at launch and shortly after launch, thats normal for almost every launch, same goes for Vita and PS4. No one of last few consoles had lines 3 months after launch and that in same time had solid sales and in same and actually better sales than previous consoles.
Again it's not point only about lines, but sales until now, current sales and lines. Switch still sold better than Wii U, Vita and PS4 in same time frame in any case, and its continue to selling much better on week baseline, and also has long queues 3 months after launch.
Your point doesn't make sense, and your two statements are obviously wrong, it doesn't happen in Japan with every non-ms console that you have huge lines 3 months after launch and of course that Wii U didnt had lines 3 months after launch like Switch, compared to Wii U Switch has much better sales in same time period on weekly basis and huge lines (two things Wii U didn't had).
