Sony's confident eh? Just like how they were confident people would buy the PS3 at any price? *rolls eyes* I can see its sell through at the end of the fiscal year at 9.75m

rickytan said: I don't know why everyone's ripping on sony here. the 11 million or whatever it is, is an estimate! its not a guarentee, its not a promise, so why make a big deal about it?

Because people invest very large sums of money based on their "estimates".

They either have an amazing strategy at play to reach their targets, or they're deliberately misleading investors.

rickytan said: I don't know why everyone's ripping on sony here. the 11 million or whatever it is, is an estimate! its not a guarentee, its not a promise, so why make a big deal about it?

Its not an estimate. A corporate, financial forecast is supposed to be as accurate as possible. Companies hire many people, and pay them large amounts of money to come up with these numbers.

In many ways, the perceived quality of a company is based on how accurate their forecasts are.

(and there isn't really any issue with upping the numbers - if a product sells better than expected, no issues there!)

...

In my opinion, this is another issue of 'Sony arrogance'. From the minute it was issued, it was seen as completely unrealistic. Sony have had TWO chances now to amend the figures - and have taken neither. At the end of this qrt, they have one more chance (not sure when the quarterly statement for end of '07 is issued - maybe early Feb or something like that).

There is no shame in amending the figures to, say... 9m. Its better to be conservative rather than overly bullish.

IMO - this is a ploy to get publishers "excited" about the future PS3 performance (aka EA's comments not that long ago), and prevent more publishers from dropping PS3 titles (or making them X-platform).

Say Ninty forecast 50m Wiis for the next 12 months. Its a completely unrealistic figure - but it would excite a lot of people. Their share price would skyrocket. It might even be enough to get publishers to immediately divert funds to Wii development - on the spot.

Its only 12 months later, than the numbers are seen as "wrong" - and they take some flak for a bad prediction. But in the meantime - they reap the benefits of increased 3rd-party support.

(do it too many times though - and people cease to believe your projections - then there is trouble...)

...

If they manage to legitimately hit these numbers, I'll happily EAT CROW over this. 

Kasz216 said: NJ5 said: FishyJoe said: 11m LTD by March 31, 2008 is a made up number. It's not the number published in Sony's own financial documents. The only people perpetuating this number are the uninformed. The OFFICIAL number published in Sony's own financial statements is 11m for the fiscal year of 2007 only. The previous fiscal year, as reported in Sony's own financial statements, the PS3 recorded 3.57 million shipments. Therefor the total number of expected PS3 shipments as of March 31, 2008 is 14.57 million. Let me repeat, 14.57m is the expected PS3 shipments as of March 31, 2008 and is clearly specified in Sony's OFFICIAL financial statements. http://www.sony.net/SonyInfo/IR/financial/fr/07q1_eleki.pdf   FishyJoe is right. Even though this has been repeated countless times by different posters in several threads, most people still seem to be posting without this in mind.   That's because most of the people reporting these things don't get that... cause they are lazy and just filling headlines. Unless Sony is suddenly trying to pull a slick trick and say they meant 11 million total instead of 11 million for the fiscal year.

Personally, I'm fully aware of what Sony has previously claimed.

I'm also fairly certain that Sony is going to do a little fiscal slight of hand, use people's natural confusion about shipped, sold to retailers and sold to end users, to reduce their shipment estimates by 3.5 Million units while still having people believe they met their target. Sony will be very careful not to do anything illegal, but they will phrase their adjustment in their third quarter fiscal update in a confusing enough way to distract most people.

It depends on how well they do in January and February. Right now, their not doing very strong in any region. There simply doing better than Xbox in Europe and much better in Japan in comparison. Thier numbers should drop drastically once the holiday season is over until they get some must have games. Their entire marketing ploy like price cuts and intense advertising helped them to get many short term gains, but nothing thats lasting to help them over the dry spring season.

shams said: rickytan said: I don't know why everyone's ripping on sony here. the 11 million or whatever it is, is an estimate! its not a guarentee, its not a promise, so why make a big deal about it? Its not an estimate. A corporate, financial forecast is supposed to be as accurate as possible. Companies hire many people, and pay them large amounts of money to come up with these numbers. In many ways, the perceived quality of a company is based on how accurate their forecasts are. (and there isn't really any issue with upping the numbers - if a product sells better than expected, no issues there!) ... In my opinion, this is another issue of 'Sony arrogance'. From the minute it was issued, it was seen as completely unrealistic. Sony have had TWO chances now to amend the figures - and have taken neither. At the end of this qrt, they have one more chance (not sure when the quarterly statement for end of '07 is issued - maybe early Feb or something like that). There is no shame in amending the figures to, say... 9m. Its better to be conservative rather than overly bullish. IMO - this is a ploy to get publishers "excited" about the future PS3 performance (aka EA's comments not that long ago), and prevent more publishers from dropping PS3 titles (or making them X-platform). Say Ninty forecast 50m Wiis for the next 12 months. Its a completely unrealistic figure - but it would excite a lot of people. Their share price would skyrocket. It might even be enough to get publishers to immediately divert funds to Wii development - on the spot. Its only 12 months later, than the numbers are seen as "wrong" - and they take some flak for a bad prediction. But in the meantime - they reap the benefits of increased 3rd-party support. (do it too many times though - and people cease to believe your projections - then there is trouble...) ... If they manage to legitimately hit these numbers, I'll happily EAT CROW over this.

 If Ninty said it, I would wonder if they are about to spike up production, because they could do it, with enough shipments, but Sony can't sell that many even with the supply

shams said: rickytan said: I don't know why everyone's ripping on sony here. the 11 million or whatever it is, is an estimate! its not a guarentee, its not a promise, so why make a big deal about it? Its not an estimate. A corporate, financial forecast is supposed to be as accurate as possible. Companies hire many people, and pay them large amounts of money to come up with these numbers. In many ways, the perceived quality of a company is based on how accurate their forecasts are. (and there isn't really any issue with upping the numbers - if a product sells better than expected, no issues there!) ... In my opinion, this is another issue of 'Sony arrogance'. From the minute it was issued, it was seen as completely unrealistic. Sony have had TWO chances now to amend the figures - and have taken neither. At the end of this qrt, they have one more chance (not sure when the quarterly statement for end of '07 is issued - maybe early Feb or something like that). There is no shame in amending the figures to, say... 9m. Its better to be conservative rather than overly bullish. IMO - this is a ploy to get publishers "excited" about the future PS3 performance (aka EA's comments not that long ago), and prevent more publishers from dropping PS3 titles (or making them X-platform). Say Ninty forecast 50m Wiis for the next 12 months. Its a completely unrealistic figure - but it would excite a lot of people. Their share price would skyrocket. It might even be enough to get publishers to immediately divert funds to Wii development - on the spot. Its only 12 months later, than the numbers are seen as "wrong" - and they take some flak for a bad prediction. But in the meantime - they reap the benefits of increased 3rd-party support. (do it too many times though - and people cease to believe your projections - then there is trouble...) ... If they manage to legitimately hit these numbers, I'll happily EAT CROW over this.

Yeah it's true. If you think people are being harsh on Sony now... see how harsh people are when they're numbers come out. In otherwords, see how big a hit their stock price takes. Lower your estimations and you take a small hit. Miss your estimations, you take an average big hit, say you are going to hit your estimations till the last minute and you don't... then you take a pretty large hit. Not to mention you lower invetor confidence, which hurts the perceived value of the company capping how high it can rise again, though usually as shams says it takes a couple reports like this that are basically seen has lies to the investors and potential investors. People don't like when you lie to them in matters that involve their money.

Avinash_Tyagi said: Mmmm...the smell of channel stuffing

 Agreed. If Microsoft could stuff 2 million last Christmas, Sony can stuff 4. After a decade of video game domination they still have carte blanche with retailers around the world.

Even if they manage to ship that much they cant ship for 6 months afterwards. Its going to look worse in the report, stockholders will think people have stopped buying the console.

reverie said: Avinash_Tyagi said: Mmmm...the smell of channel stuffing Agreed. If Microsoft could stuff 2 million last Christmas, Sony can stuff 4. After a decade of video game domination they still have carte blanche with retailers around the world.

 4 million .... its a bit much , though it could be as much as 2 million :?