Sony Computer Entertainment Inc., the world’s leading supplier of gaming consoles, said on Tuesday that it had successfully shipped two million of its PlayStation 3 game consoles, about two weeks behind its own schedule. However, some analysts expressed concerns that customers are reluctant to buy game machines that cost $500 - $600 amid small amount of high quality games available for the PS3 now.
SCEI today revealed that it had supplied one million PlayStation 3 consoles to its customers in Japan, whereas on the 8th of January it indicated that it managed to ship one million of units to its partners in North America region, thus, the company managed to make available two million PlayStation 3 game consoles about two weeks after its own target for the milestone – by the end of 2006.
Nevertheless, undersupplies may not be the only problem for the PlayStation 3. Masayuki Otani, deputy chief of research at Maruwa Securities, reportedly told Associated Press news-agency that PS3 sales “were struggling in Japan with excess stock languishing at retailers”. Back in December some observers in the USA also indicated that customers were unwilling to pay for premium sets of bundles that included PlayStation 3s.
NPD Research, an independent market tracking agency, recently indicated that back in December there were shipped 1.132 million Xbox 360 game consoles, 604 thousand Nintendo Wii game machines and 490.7 thousand Sony PlayStation 3 much-anticipated game consoles in the USA. The same market tracking agency revealed earlier that in November end-users acquired 195 thousand PlayStation 3 machines. Thus, about 685 thousand of the PS3 game consoles were bought by end-users in calendar 2006, starting from November 17, or about 115 thousand a week. Meanwhile, Sony made available over 140 thousand of PS3s a week on average.
“The launch has a lot of problems, but things could pick up with time,” Mr. Otani is reported to have said.
Despite of missed targets, Sony reportedly further stressed about ability to ship 6 million PS3 game consoles by late March, 2007.
Sony PlayStation 3 console is based on the Cell processor developed by IBM, Sony and Toshiba, the RSX graphics chip by Nvidia Corp. and will be equipped with Blu-ray optical disk drive. There are two versions of the PlayStation console available: one is equipped with 20GB hard disk drive and priced at $499, another features 60GB hard drive, card reader and some other improvements and is offered for $599.
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Discussion started: 01/16/07 07:35:21 PM
Latest comment: 01/17/07 08:31:18 AM
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1.
PS3 is ONLY suffering from out of stock problem. You are better off to ask Sony whether 2 million is enough for satisfy the demand!
Don't forget besides Japan and USA, PS3 is offically lanuched in Hong Kong and Taiwan since 11Nov2006 as well. But I can't see any of those foolish "market tracking agency" take this 2 markets in account as well.
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Posted by: Poor quality XBit Labs article
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Date: 01/16/07 07:35:21 PM]
+ expand thread (1 answer)
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Considering this is not the first feedback from you, we feel like we need to respond.
This is an X-bit labs quality news-story and your arguments are, it looks like, the arguments of a poor-quality PS3 fanboy.
PlayStation, PlayStation 2 and PlayStation Portable shipments for Japan include South Korea and other Asian countries as well (http://www.playstation.com/business.html). The PlayStation 3 has not been launched in Korea, even the date has not been set(http://english.chosun.com/w21data/html/news/200612/2006 12040006.html; http://www.playstation.co.kr). The PS3 allocation for Taiwan was 500 units for the first day (http://www.xbitlabs.com/news/multimedia/display/2006111503 5918.html), which means that the numbers shipped to Taiwan and Hong Kong were very low.
There is also no problems with getting the PS3 in the USA, according to yet another analyst.
"Our channel checks yesterday of 52 retail stores, from boutiques to big-box retailers, showed that 28 of the 52 stores had PS3 consoles in stock, while none had Wii consoles in stock," American Technology Research analyst Paul-Jon McNealy said in the research note.
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Posted by: Anton
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Date: 01/17/07 08:31:18 AM]
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PS3 launch may crash in Europe, since it's expected to cost 499 and 599 Euros. That means 644 US$ and 774 US$ respectively.
Many young people in countries like Spain earn barely 700 Euros per month (minimum wage is set at 460 Euros here). Are those consoles for rich ones?
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Posted by: Frankie
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Date: 01/17/07 01:47:41 AM]
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