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drkohler said:
Alby_da_Wolf said:

If Sony predicts it will be able to ramp up production later, couldn't it be that they are starting stockpiling 50k/week in the slower Summer period for next Xmas and possible strongest weeks in the meantime?

No, that is not going to happen. That would be immense storage costs, losing revenue on hw and sw all the way. And they did survive last XMas so they will have to survive this Xmas whatever happens until December, as far as ramping up manufacturing is concerned.

An additional factor is the transfer to the 6nm refresh which they likely want to do as early a possible. You don't want to have warehouses full of "old" consoles when the better version comes out...

Well, sooner or later they must start stockpiling for Xmas: in the weeks from BF to Xmas sales can easily range from 3x to over 5x (during record BF' and Xmas' even more) the sales of slower periods.
If they manage the warehouses with a FIFO order, they don't risk having them full of old stuff at the wrong moment.
When stockpiling starts depends on Xmas period sales predictions, current production capacity and how much they plan to ramp it up in the next months.
6nm is utterly desirable, I agree, but the sources I found predict it for next year, so this could be an additional reason to not ramp old tech production up more than strictly necessary to reach planned sales.
OTOH there isn't just Sony in the matter, surely AMD had a say in the deal on the minimum number of units it will produce with each major process and mid-life refresh to make them economically viable, surely in the deal there is a compromise to make both parts reasonably happy (and surely both Sony and MS are happy AMD isn't strong enough to force horribly one-sided deals like Intel and NVidia did with MS for the first XB).
Anyhow, doing a quick maths, and taking for granted that some ramping up, even little, is most  likely to happen, I agree that most probably early June is quite too early to start stockpiling... We'll have to watch sales in the next weeks and wait for more infos.



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