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Playstation 3 Sells Out At Japanese Launch
s31523 writes "With its high price tag and stiff competition the PS3 was a gamble. Based on the reaction in Japan to the game console's release, there might be a new hot toy on everyone's Christmas list here in the states. According to the article there were 100,000 units [Z: actually, only 80,000 units] available and all were sold out in record time. There are 2 configurations currently offered, a 60GB WiFi enabled box and a 20GB non-WiFi box. The Japanese price for the lower end system is considerably discounted vs. the system to be released in the States." For a look at launch day, Kotaku has photos taken by Sony's Phil Harrison on the streets of Tokyo.
Tomoaki Nakamura, 41, said: "I've been waiting for this day to come for so long. I'll play it all through the weekend. No time for meals."
Well, I guess that shows who Sony's demographics are, 41 year old men who put gaming ahead of basic biological function. Take that Maslow!
Monstar L
1. Manufacture a ridiculously low amount of units 2. Sell out of those units at a highly discounted rate 3. MAKE NO PROFIT!! 4. Declare victory
Kutaragi-san, don't you have better places to be right now than the slashdot forums?! You should be working on production issues, better developer tools, and lack of strong launch titles...
The first one million consoles will be an easy sell for sony all over the world, this is basically the hardcore fans who buy everything, but after that, it will be interesting how the console will sell. You can see that with every major console, that the initial sales are high, there always is enough fanboys who dont matter how much it is for the console, they just want to have it.
Because the VGCats comic is inevitable, might as well come from someone with maxed-out Karma.
(It is pretty good though. I love the auction in the background of the second-to-last panel.)
http://www.vgcats.com/comics/?strip_id=212
No further comment needed
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So?
The Super Nintendo sold out 300,000 units.
Sony provide less than a hundred thousand to an amazingly gadget hungry market and it's now headlines that it sells out?
the opposite of genuine demand, ie: the buzz around wii. nintendo didnt have to chop down the amount of launch units to a miniscule portion to get people hyped up about their system, sony did, hence this article and my reply. sony did this same thing with PS2 launch and even with smaller launches like the PS2 network adapter. just a cheap way of creating, what i consider (if its alright with you...) 'fraudulent demand'
http://www.joystiq.com/2006/11/10/japanese-hardwar e-sales-30-october-5-november-incredibly-inn/
Notice the amount of hardware sold... in a week... in Japan. The DS completely dominates with more than 100,000 sold in a WEEK. This is months after it has launched, while the PS3 has only 80,000 to sell. Now yes, the DS costs much less, but notice that Nintendo probably makes a profit on it rather than a loss, AND this amount of units allows them to sell more software.
How much software is going to move for the PS3 when it's launch is only 80,000? Most of those best seller games are in the area of several 100 thousand to several million units sold. That isn't going to happen for a while. So yes the PS3 sold out, but we can't call it any kind of success yet with this few sold. Maybe if they pushed out 1 million units and sold them all, then we can say they were a success.
Does anyone remember how many units they originally said they were planning on having for launch? Selling 80k units in your home territory isn't exactly "news". Hell the PS2 managed to sell 900,000 units in its first weekend in Japan. Somehow a 92% reduction in the number of units you managed to push is "newsworthy"? Give me a break.
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Some users are already reporting PS3 games freezing during play and some other technical issues. Makes sense, they cut supplies because they can't get good yields of usable components. That being the case, Sony probably sets the quality control bar as to what consittues a good usnit low as they can so they can have as many as possible. With all the noise made over the 360 overheating problems, I hope for Sony's sake these reports are premature. Because if they freeze or have other technical issues there are some 7 million Xbox 360 owners just wating to make a big deal out of it. I bet ya' everybody and there brother interested in concole gaming is just waiting to take a picture/video of a frozen PS3 and gain YouTube fame.
EVERY console made by a Japanese company sells out at launch in Japan. The fucking VisualBoy sold out in Japan.
I'm interested, how big is Japan in the big picture? First or Second? We all know (if even just by how the companies treat them) that Europe is third most important. Anywhere other than North America, Japan, or Europe is rarely even heard in the news. But is Japan the bigger battlefield than the US? If we look at the launch numbers, Sony and Nintendo are both putting more emphasis on the US. Sony's US Launch day is scheduled to have 400,000 PS3 units, about 4x the number of their Japanese launch. Nintendo is planning a US launch day of 1,000,000 Wii units. Meanwhile I can't even find Nintendo's Japan launch day units; they don't even release in Japan until December, after the November US launch. So, the companies seem to indicate that in the big picture, the US is the bigger prize. Launching two days apart, with more units (assumed for Wii Japan) will make a much more useful comparison than a 23-day apart Japan launch with relativly fewer units.
It may also be interesting to see how Sony's launch titles did, since they need games and accessories to pull up the difference. Some of the games present on Sony's Japan launch list also appear on the Wii's. Depending on quantities of these sold compared to the number of units sold in proportion to other games per unit sold may tell us if there are customers prepared to buy the Wii as well and plan on buying those games for the Wii instead. While it would have to be a large difference to overcome the large margin of error such a comparison welcomes, it may still provide some insite into the minds of the buyers and give us a rough idea how the big US launch will go for Sony or Nintendo.
Demented But Determined.
LikSang could have shifted that
diamonds are not scare... DeBeers hoard them and create an artificial scarcity in order to keep the price high.
Donald 'Duck' Dunn: We had a band powerful enough to turn goat piss into gasoline.
...PC Watch bought one and took it apart.
Impressions:
- That's one huge cooling fan!
- Why did they use a Seagate drive, when Seagate is known for sucking more power than just about anybody else?
- Not as many components on the MB as you might expect for a first revision.
- The ATI RSX has its video memory on the module, but not in-core.
According to posts on various Japanese sites, there also seem to be a few problems.
- The unit gets hot. Very hot.
- A couple of people reported the unit powering off during the software update, which permanently bricked the unit.
- The browser can't play Flash.
So, I decided to go to my local game store (Famicon Jungle) the other night to see the status of the PS3 in Japan (not really giving a crap, as I have my Wii on pre-order, but just to see what games are out and whatnot).
So, I go to the store, and there's about 3 cars waiting outside of the store. 2 have the geekiest geeks you've ever seen in your life sitting in them, 1 has a couple just kind of hanging out eating snacks. They're all waiting for a PS3 shipment that is apparently late getting to the store.
I walk up to the store and there is a big sign on the front that says "We are sorry for the inconvenience, but we will be getting only 1-3 PS3s, and they will be given out at a first come first serve basis." It was 9pm on launch day, and apparently they still hadn't come yet.
To give you some background of where I live: I live in a town of around 500,000 people. The surrounding area is all farms, so I figure within 20km of me, there are all of 3 stores that are selling PS3s. If each one gets 1-3 machines, that means that if one in 100,000 people decides "hmmm, I would like a PS3.." then they will sell out.
Calling that a victory is just lunacy.
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Nothing can be done before the tremendous power!
RabidComics
Kotaku has an interesting report. Apparently, some people hired chinese poor people to stand in the lines and buy PS3s for resale.
Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.