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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.
LikSang could have shifted that
...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.