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Forums - Sony - Has the Playstation Move's apparent success made people go crazy?

billsalias on 24 October 2010
Reasonable said:
billsalias said:

 

The fundamental problem is Sony did not release detailed information so we are all left to speculate on what the situation is. In this case both sides are showing their bias and taking the best and worst case scenarios respectively.

 

Currently we know is Sony has shipped 2.5 million of "Move", that is all. They did not give us detailed information of what those units were and they did not give a breakdown of the ratio of sales.

 

There is talk of shortages, but there are no details. I think universally no one is saying there is a shortage of starter packs but I think any reasonable person will agree the wands are not well supplied. (Anecdotal 

 

These two bits of information can be interpreted in so many ways that it is absurd for anyone on either side to claim anything as "fact". As an example here are two scenarios that are both supported by the above what I consider objective information.

 

Sony Bias

Sony shipped 750k started packs, 100k navigators and 1.65 million wands. 1 million PS-Eye owners bought 1 or 2 move controller and 600k starter packs sold with some of those people buying a second wand as well. The navigators are irrelevant. This results in 1.6 million unique move users. The 150k starter packs out there are enough for it to seem in supply but just barely and the wands are essentially sold out. Who cares about navs.

 

Anti Sony Bias

Sony shipped 1.7 million starter packs, 400k wands, and 400k navs. Only 100k starter packs sold and there are pallets of them sitting in warehouses waiting to be discounted because they can't be unloaded. 100k PS-Eye owners bought a wand and nav and each of the 100k starter pack buyers bought three of each, so yes all 400k sold out but there is only a user base of 200k.

 

With the information we have both viewpoints are equally valid. Personally I think both are equally unlikely. As usual the reality is some place in the middle with the scenario probably that Sony guessed wrong at the starter pack to wand ratio and the production they are ramping up is on stand along wands and they have plenty of starter packs available.

 

The lack of detailed sales information coming out of Sony backs up my "some place in the middle" scenario.  If news was as good as the Sony fans say they would be giving a lot more details, if it was as bad as the Sony haters say then they would not have said anything about numbers and stuck to their slow burn comments.


That is indeed the problem.  Ioi's calculations here are based on guesstimates and of course assuming different ratios can result in wildly different scenarios.

As I've stated in other threads I think that the likely position is indeed "somewhere in the middle" as you put it.

Move standalone Wands for example is definately the main element they are struggling to keep in stock.  Starter bundles seem to be in decent demand but are clearly in an okay stock position in most retailers.

Initial SW sales for new Move titles has been okay but not spectacular by any means.

Older titles with patches have seen small boosts, and of course existing owners of EyePet, Heavy Rain, etc. have surely been behind some of the demand.  EyePet owners in particular only face the purchase of a single Wand to get going, a very low cost of entry level to Move.

I think is Sony says 2.5 million shipped then that is likely pretty true.  Sell through though could be anything from 10% to 80% depending upon how you want to play the assumptions.

I reckon it's around 60 to 65% myself with a very fractured purchase base at launch, with some Eyepet owners just getting a Wand, some Heavy Rain owners getting a bundle, some people getting a bundle and trying out the demos, some getting a bundle plus SC, some getting Start the Party, etc.

I'd estimate maybe 600K to 900K install base depending, again, upon how you split the percentages.  I'd say a fair number of Move owners probably bought 2 or more items - for example I had Eyepet (and camera) and ended up buying 2 Move wands and a navi - that's 3 distinct purchases from a retail sales perspective.

Unless Sony decide to really come clean with the launch ratio of bundles to wands to navis, the sales of each (so far as they can infer from retail) then we really are just guessing with a very broad spectrum of possibilities.

At least Kinect should be easier to judge at launch: no existing games base, 1 unit per 360 in principle and nothing but new SW titles to judge from.

Yay, a reasonable (pun intended) poster.

I totally agree, but I think to hit the 900k mark there would need to be a very high existing ps-eye owner adoption rate. Though as you said that only requires a single wand purchase so minimal investment. And now that I think about it people that bought a ps-eye are probably likely to try move since they have shown there interest in alternate input methods already in buying the ps-eye.

I wonder if they will break it out in financial reports, doubtful I guess.



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psrock on 24 October 2010

But but it not going to sell

" Sony Shipped over 2.5 million without japan"

That means it overshipped

" Analyst think Move is selling better than he once believed"

But success depends on software

 

waiting for more excuses.......



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Seece on 24 October 2010
Icyedge said:

Everyone agree that 2.5 million is sold to retailers. If 600K is sold to consumers that means retailers are stocking 3 times what they sold in the first month. Would be pretty bad business on retailers end...

Yeah but Ship can also mean warehouses, ect. It's not unusual for any devs to send a big batch out first.



 

VGhippy on 24 October 2010

My personal guestimate is that the move now has an install of about 1million with about 1.5 million move units (starter packs/contollers) sold to consumers. I think the 2.5 million sold to retailers will be sold through by christmas and you can expect about a few hundred thousand to be sold in Japan at least. So I think by Christmas the move will have sold about 3million units and have an active userbase of about 2 million.

While these numbers are not phenomenal in themselves (but certainly not a flop), I think it will be a nice money maker for Sony and a huge step to making the PS3 profitable. I also think it will allow the PS3's already great library to be expanded by decent Wii ports that could not be done before because of the lack of motion controls (I'm looking at you Zack and Wiki). And also game genres that are just generally hard to do because of joypads (point and click adventure/some sports/rail gun games).

The move is great tech and I think the real test for long term sales will be dedicated first and third party support for move exclusive games.



Seece on 24 October 2010
CGI-Quality said:
psrock said:

But but it not going to sell

" Sony Shipped over 2.5 million without japan"

That means it overshipped

" Analyst think Move is selling better than he once believed"

But success depends on software

 

waiting for more excuses.......

The only way it will be fair is if the same folks claiming "shipped vs sold" do the same for Kinect. Guess we'll know soon enough.

Of course they will, simply because it's sales arnt so ambiguous. Whatever Kinect Adventures sells, is what Kinect has sold, shipped or not.



 

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psrock on 24 October 2010
CGI-Quality said:
psrock said:

But but it not going to sell

" Sony Shipped over 2.5 million without japan"

That means it overshipped

" Analyst think Move is selling better than he once believed"

But success depends on software

 

waiting for more excuses.......

The only way it will be fair is if the same folks claiming "shipped vs sold" do the same for Kinect. Guess we'll know soon enough.

I don't  need to wait, I seriously believe Kinect Pre-oders  are overtracked with many copies sitting in warehouses throughout Europe.



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billsalias on 24 October 2010
jneul said:
buzzard said:

.....
I believe shipment numbers 100%. I also believe that they either overshipped or they factored holidays in their first shipment but the "ramping up production" is a boast, a bluff.

i don't think so not with reports from lots of people in america claiming they can't find move anywhere!!

anyway like you say on the next shipment we shall know who is right


The only reports I have heard of are individual controller shortages, not starter packs. And "they can't find move anywhere" is hyperbole. Around me (suburb of Boston MA) about half the EB stores are out of or low on wands, all of them have starter packs:

EB Store availability

I also have seen plenty in my local Walmart but Best Buy was short on wands.

I think it is selling well but I think the issue is more one of fine tuning the balance of packaging of stand alone versus bundled wands not an overall shortage.



evolution_1ne on 24 October 2010
IMU1808 said:
Seece said:
kowenicki said:

I dont think either Sony or MS are making a peripheral for the sake of selling a peripheral.

MOVE and Kinect will only be a success if they drive significant, prolonged extra console sales and software sales as far as I and I'd bet SONY/MS are concerned.

 

 

 

It's quite evident this is an afterthought from Sony, and until recently showed zero passion for Move. I think they care about it as much as Microsoft did HD DVD, they're behind it, but they won't cry a river if it fails ..


I'm pretty sure MS' HD-DVD add-on didn't take up more than 60% of one of their E3 conferences and had strong showings at pretty much all of their conferences like SONY's Move in recent conferences in the past year or 2...

EDIT: Not to mention just look at the bulk of SONY games release this half of the year. Compare the number of Move titles to standard retail SONY releases...

move got 2 stage demos and a montage at E3, 60%?? what conference where you watching?...... Microsoft's

and as for release date it's looks more lop sided due to key delays and it's the launch of the device of course there will be a bunch of games.

move is nothing more than a  peripheral in Sony's eye's I'm mean here in the US it got little to no advertising 

kinect on the other hand is a complete re-branding.



Carl on 24 October 2010
CGI-Quality said:

You're likely not going to get a response.

Here's what I gather......Sony said Move would "slow burn" to market. Well, I don't know how to calculate how Move is doing, but chances are, it's anything but bad.  Most Sony fans, if memory serves me right, didn't predict much higher than what it's done.

Probably not.

I think Most Sony fans (myself included) expected it to do about 1.5/2 Million by the end of the year. Being hugely outsold by Kinect (Which MS expect to sell (ship) 3 Million of?).

It's sold (shipped) 2.5 Million units before Japan launch. It's far exceeded my expectations...



                            

steverhcp02 on 24 October 2010
Seece said:
Icyedge said:

Everyone agree that 2.5 million is sold to retailers. If 600K is sold to consumers that means retailers are stocking 3 times what they sold in the first month. Would be pretty bad business on retailers end...

Yeah but Ship can also mean warehouses, ect. It's not unusual for any devs to send a big batch out first.


Agreed, but we arent discussing a "big batch out first" we are talking about shipped figures 1.5 months after release with production ramp up still not meeting demand for the actual Move controller.

Again move is so very hard to track for obvious reasons. I simply find it comical people are ignoring all logic (sony upping production, pachters restatement, difficult periphs to find, backorders, price increases on amazon in multiple countries combined with the shipped figure) Yet even in the wake of this website having to adjust merely hardware numbers 400k people are so quick you cling to the tracking of probably the most difficult thing this websites ever had to track.




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