| Shadow1980 said:
TL;DR: Launching during the holidays does have a clear, demonstrable effect on sales, with an obvious causal mechanism in play. This tends to favor Q4 launches when comparing LTD sales, at least for early-life sales (the effect does of course wear off over time). |
Thanks alot for this. Data always beats assumptions. According to this we could expect that launching in the holidays might give a boost of 5-10% of the sales of the first half year - at least in Japan.
To the people claiming this can't be because supply constraints dominating sales: Supply is dependent on how much the company produces. The underlying assumption in your argument is, that this number is constant. But while there is no infinite production capacity, the production is strongly dependent on how much the console cpmpany orders from manufacturers like Foxconn, Pegatron and the like. So, they look at preorders, market research and some common sense and make educated guesses how much they do order. So in the holidays their research indicates higher demand, so they probably supply more units. This explains the data Shadow compiled.
