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Otter on 19 December 2020
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Mnementh said:
Otter said:

But what do we know about demand? PS4 launching late in Japan meant better supply

I don't get the supply excuse. Sony produced more PS5 at launch than PS4, but decided to supply less to Japan? The message here is either, that japanese customers don't like PS5 or that Sony doesn't like japan. Either way, that is no good sign.

EDIT: To put the supply argument the other way around: although Sony also had to deliver to japan (which they didn't with PS4), they could supply more PS5 to the US and europe. But still japan numbers are that bad.

The first bolded part doesn't add up because Japan was not included in PS4's initial launch at all. So sony are supplying more PS5's to japan then the comparable point in the PS4's life, which was 0.

As for the latter, the same reason why sony delayed the PS4's Japan launch is the reason why they have pushed more supply to US/EU. We know these places are its priority. Higher Japan stock will mean less for US/EU, where its fighting more direct competition from MS and has more to earn in terms of software and services revenue. we obviously know they've shifted focus to the west, that isn't new information. 

There's no doubt that Sony have lost a lot of ground in Japan, but drawing comparisons to the PS4's launch just makes for messy equations since they're not directly comparable. By all means it could be that with infinite supply PS5 sells much worse than ps4, but we can't draw that conclusion from it being undersupplied at a point where the PS4 wasn't released due to supply constraints.