I know its sheer stupidity

SONY have had since Spetember to realise PS3 demand in America was greater than ever before

Its not difficult to make more units

@rccsetzer

lol this has nothing to do with Japan!

Is that an asymetric (Xbox layout) PS3 controller I see in the Walmart bundle? I never knew such things existed for PS3.

On possible PS3 HW shortage: I guess that also means no $50 gift card PS3 deal from Walmart this side of Christmas. Dare I say it, is that a possible reason 360 outsold PS3 last week in Americas?

I think rccsetzer is suggesting that Sony underestimated hardware demand on a worldwide level, hence the shortcuts in Walmart and the low first Japanese FFXIII shipment (which was dictated by Lightning bundle orders, and I presume these orders were restricted themselves by low actual availability).

FF13 shipments weren't dictated by Lightning Bundle orders

it was the other way round

FF13 week 1 shipments is to do with pre-orders & they are fine if The SOurce's pre-orders have been correct

Weird. I just called one of the managers at our local Walmart (my boss's younger brother). All he said is there is a reason and I will see. then laughed a bit.

Any ideas? He wouldnt tell me anything but that.

My local Best Buy has the 120 and 250 GB SKUS in stock. Like 20 of the 120s and around 50 of the 250s.

now that's some mysterious shit right there lol 

Perhaps, shock horror, Sony has conceded America to Wii and 360. They need PS3 to stay in the American market, obviously, so they will still be pushing for sales. But they only have a finite amount of production they can pump out and they've decided to focus on the regions where they are already in 2nd place (Japan) and where they are soon to overtake 360 for second (and by the way they lose less, or even make a small profit on each unit sold compared to Americas where they make the biggest unit loss with each sale). They want to make in-roads into Wii's lead in Japan and build up a strong lead over 360 in Others (esp Europe) heading in to 2010.

He said it like that, wow.

possibly a Wal Mart PS3 gift deal......so they are saving up stock

thats a logical conclusion

unless all of the PS3's sent to wal mart are defective