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PS3 Japanese Estimates Down, No 360 Price Drop

Posted by Zonk on Tue Oct 31, 2006 11:30 AM
from the bad-for-both-worlds dept.
Sony PlayStation (Games) The Almighty Buck XBox (Games)
There are unhappy gamers on a couple sides of the console wars today. IGN is reporting that Japan's allotment of 100,000 PS3 units will actually be more like 80,000. From that article: "The lack of digits in that number is even more staggering when you consider that the PS2 sold out of nearly a million units when it launched back in March of 2000. Having lived through a few weeks of attempting to obtain a PS3 pre-order, we're not too surprised by the lowered shipping numbers. Allocations disappeared quickly at online retailers that were brave enough to start pre-order programs. The online arm of media retailer Tsutaya ran out of units in 6 minutes according to Nikkei (it felt more like 1 minute to us)." Meanwhile, the Seattle PI reports that Microsoft has once again denied the possibility of a 360 price drop any time soon.
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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.
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PS3 Japanese Estimates Down, No 360 Price Drop 50 Comments More /

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  • ...they run out of batteries for controllers?
    • Nah, they have plenty of them, just the smoke really messes up the boxes and ticks off the retailers.
  • Considering the price of the PS3, I'm not surprised Sony expected a lower turn-out, and I'm not surprised MS is holding on the price of the Xbox. What I am surprised at is that anyone else is.
    • TFA/S says nothing about Sony expected low turn-out. It says everything about component shortages, though. They aren't shipping fewer because they won't sell, they just can't make them fast enough, even with all the bad press lately.
      • I'm sure, if Sony had wanted to, they could've spent many millions on new facilities and ramped production up to the point where a million units would've been available. But that would've been a risk, considering the high price of the unit (which might've gone higher because of the additional production expense) and the potential competition from HD-DVD. Given that, I would've wussed out too, and taken the confidence hit rather than risk having to liquidate a huge glut of expensive machines.
        • Even the summary states that preorders sold out in six minutes, which indicates anything but a low demand!

          The total number of available PS3 preorders is tiny, because there is so much confusion over how many units will be available.

          • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

            by jevvim (826181)
            A supply of 80k units for the entirety of Japan is ridiculous. Even the Xbox would have managed to sell out of that.

            According to a GameSpot article [gamespot.com], launch-weekend sales of the Xbox360 in Japan were reported between 41,817 and 62,135 units, out of an estimated supply of 159,000 units.

    • They would have easily sold at least 500K (half the amount the ps2 instantly sold out of on the first day) on launch day no matter the price. The places that offered online pre-orders in japan were out of units within 6 minutes.
  • Nintendo fans report feeling "alright" about the current turn of events. As one astutely commented, "Meh."
  • ...Sony giving away vouchers for a PS3 on launch day for when one becomes available so they can bump up the initial sales figures.

    • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

      by ShadowsHawk (916454)
      Nintendo is the only one that goes by sales figures. $ony and Micro$oft go buy units shipped. Probably not a huge difference but it is worth taking note of.

  • Sony just keeps getting kicked.... by themselves. (Score:3, Interesting)

    by kinglink (195330) on Tuesday October 31 2006, @11:43AM (#16659491)
    We aren't going to ship 4 Million, we're going ship 2 by the end of the year
    We aren't going to ship to Europe until March.
    We are dropping the lower priced system's price by 10000 yen(or so) in japan but we're not scared
    We aren't going to be able to make the launch numbers.

    Jesus, could they be any stupider? Now they are running advertisements for the PS3 on TV. what? Do they think they are going to get more interest with a doll in the ad rather then showing game play? The simple fact is they want people killing each other to get the system, and it's just not happening. They can't sell more than they are shipping, and that's already low, but they need people to drool so much they aren't picking up a 360 instead. What's worse, those guys who preorder or who will go the distance, probably have a 360 at home so while they gain market share, they aren't getting the 1 system families.

    The PS3 has been a huge mistake every step of the way, and just when you think it is over.... it's not.

    Hell I wouldn't be surprised if the systems don't boot up or immediately don't work, Sony's track record wasn't great, but the PS3 makes me think there was a mandatory lobotomy of all Sony management.

    And this doesn't get into the fact that Sony's advertising diversion is.... well if Management got lobotomies, they got headectomies. Their advertising isn't just weak, it's ineffectual.
    • Jesus, could they be any stupider?

      Enough said.
        • I don't have an Oxford American Dictionary, but my OED, Webster, WordNet, and Random House all disagree with that.
          • I don't have an Oxford American Dictionary, but my OED, Webster, WordNet, and Random House all disagree with that.

            I would you suggest that you measure the validity of a word not by how many different dictionaries it appears in, but rather by how obvious it makes the concept it attempts to express.

            "Stupider" is a perfectly cromulent word. You'd have to be stupider than a tree to be unable to understand its meaning of "more stupid".
            • Well then, by your logic, I agree. I think that "stupider" is a distinctively cromulent word.
          • It's the New American Dictionary, it's stupider by definition.
    • I don't know, that doll was pretty creepy. Maybe the advertisers are making it part of a campaign that will climax with: "buy a ps3 or this doll will come and kill you in your sleep"

      • I don't know, that doll was pretty creepy.

        I second this. It did nothing to make me want to buy the console itself. If anything, I was turned off to the product. They can't possibly be trying to gain mindshare at this point, but you never know.

    • They're really missing an opportunity with their commercials.

      To get the best sense of the graphical prowess of the modern consoles, you need an effectively-uncompressed video feed. The gameplay videos you can download, by and large, don't cut it; they can show gameplay but they can't show the graphics. They are compressed far more than a TV feed and typically shrunk to less than NTSC resolution, let alone HDTV resolution.

      TV is the best place to be putting out some game clips that really show the PS3 kicking
    • For all that rant, there is a good point to consider in there. Namely, what if there are defective PS3s?

      Microsoft got a good lashing last year when a fair number of their consoles had issues. Not a very significant number, but enough that word got around the net fast. You can argue that perhaps we were looking for reasons for the 360 to fail, but you can make that same argument now for the PS3.

      If the launch is anything short of perfect, we're going to hear about it. Seeing as how only the hardcore, internet
      • Actually people are already a little suspicious of the console.

        Let's start with the PSX? The first YEAR of console production had overheating issues. This isn't one batch, most of the early consoles had issues with this. But at least the console didn't break of get destroyed (though a couple discs got scratched).

        Then the PS2, was a lot better, less overheating (though some), but after a couple years we got DREs, Disk read errors to those who don't know. PS1 games no longer were read, some PS2 games did
    • Haven't most games console adverts (for the system itself) been completley bizzare, and only vaugley related to gaming though? I'm in the UK, and we've had plenty of odd ads: What has an alien faces Scotswoman [youtube.com] to do with the PlayStation, or The Third Place [youtube.com] to do with the PS2? Or the later Fun Anyone? [youtube.com] ads for that matter. From cradle to grave [youtube.com] (and later banned), but does it really say much about the Xbox? The fake gunfight [youtube.com] to sell the Xbox 360 is a bit more game related than most though. After the odd "barbe
      • There are some poor choices for ads, but there's some great ones.

        The point I was making was Sony is advertising something they will sell out of. Assume Audi makes 200,000 cars of a new ST type (Stylish touring). They then sell all 200,000 of the initial run. Would it be smart for them to run adds for the ST? Not really. Now if they are going to make more, it might be smart so people might hold off on buying another car and see if they can get an ST

        However in Sony's case their ads have been completely i
  • These guys can jockey for position all they want, I'm holding out for the Okama Gamesphere.
  • This will be *the* cheapest Blu-Ray player out there and is priced to go head-to-head with the Toshiba HDA1 HD-DVD player. I think a lot of people will be buying it, and I'm wondering out of those people, how many are buying it for Hi-Def movies. The PS3 might do well if they also try courting non-gaming theater buffs. The inclusion of the Blu-Ray drive may be a huge factor in making the PS3 viable and marketable, while also bolstering their Blu-Ray efforts.
    • if that's the case, why not make a cheap blu-ray player and leave out all the expensive/hard to make PS3 parts? The PS3 part is to get more blu-ray players out there, not the other way around.
      • if that's the case, why not make a cheap blu-ray player and leave out all the expensive/hard to make PS3 parts?

        Blu-Ray was the big expensive part, and because of it Sony will be taking a loss on every PS3 sold. Sony can't afford to take a loss on just regular Blu-Ray players, where they get don't get the licensing fees and accessory sales that will allow them to make up for that loss with the PS3.
      • The way Sony sees it, you'll save up a few months pay, or pool together with your friends to be able to afford a PS3. You will stop eating, you will stop buying PS2 games and accessories, all to get a shiny new PS3. And as a bonus, you'll get a Bluray player (highly subsidized).

        Point is, they're supposedly taking a huge loss by including Bluray in the PS3. They're banking it all on the PS3 selling in droves. Then they hope that people will actually buy Bluray movies afterward. If they just made a cheap Blur
          • I doubt it would be noticed, especially by shoppers at Walmart. In order to really take advantage of Bluray, you also need to have an HDTV and decent sound system. Most people would not notice the difference between DVD and HD-DVD or Bluray on a 27" SDTV. And from what I hear, a lot of the Bluray movies that are currently on the market don't look much better than their DVD release. And they especially don't look good enough to warrant the price of new equipment.
          • The DVD market is huge, and if Sony could produce a cheap player that would target the Walmarts, Sony would be set.

            The Walmarts already have cheap DVD players. They cost under $50.

            How many people are going to look at a "cheap" Blu-Ray player, costing ten times as much, and conclude that it's a good value and they need to take one home?
      • If you're halfway intelligent and aren't in the top 5% income bracket, you'll remember how quickly DVD players came down once the format became common knowledge. Seeing how DVD's are already pretty decent quality, I don't think waiting a year or so for a much wider selection of players at much better prices is going to be too hard for most people.
        • What sort of cheap DVD player do you have? I have $25 player from Jewel (grocery store) that I picked up on a whim and it works fine. I'm betting that your post is FUD or you got a lemon.

      • 480k is a lot of people, but I don't think those preorders were for the Blu-ray player aspect.

        I agree. I'd have to say a large bulk of the pre-orders are from folks that just want to "buy low, sell high ... on eBay". Reading through some of the pre-order line interviews on some of the gaming sites (Kotaku and Joystiq come to mind), it seems like a majority of buyers are just trying to make a quick buck. With all the money that was made with eBay selling of the PS2 and the Xbox 360, it's almost hard to blame

  • If it is "all about the games", what kind of effect is this going to have on those developers working towards "Launch Window" games? Will the effect be minimal, because those who actually buy the system have all the disposable income imaginable to buy every single game out there? Or are we looking at marketing budgets going to the toilet because nobody has the console anyway? 80,000 on release day in Japan, and they expect how many by the end of the first month? Could it be possible that the Xbox360 will be
        • What he was suggesting was remarkably foolish, but with 3D games you can support higher resolutions in a newer version without causing compatibility issues; if you tripled the power of the GPU and made the frame-buffer 6 times as large, I'm pretty sure that you could run any Wii game at 1080p without any extra development or any performance hit. I personally suspect that Nintendo would only do this if (in 12-18 months) a large portion of potential users do not buy the system because it does not support HD.
            • It wouldn't be perfect, but it'd be better (in most ways) than upsampling from NTSC/PAL resolutions. Future games would be tested with it. It would be reasonably analogous to the PS1/PS2 situation, although obviously not perfect.

              Plus, Nintendo may be able to do some careful work to avoid this problem, since they presumably wouldn't be just sticking any ol' updated graphics card in, but a card custom designed for this purpose.

              I think it's a distinct possibility, if Nintendo percieves that lack of HD is hurti
        • What you're proposing is a second iteration of the Wii which is actually functionally different.

          Like the Gameboy Color was a second iteration of the Gameboy which was actually functionally different?

          Granted, Nintendo waited about nine years after the introduction of the classic GB before introducing an evolved model...

  • Of course.. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by CaseM (746707) on Tuesday October 31 2006, @12:05PM (#16659907)
    I always get a chuckle at these denials and the fact that they're even reported as news. Of course Microsoft is going to deny a price drop (even if it's coming), just the way Nintendo denied they were remaking the DS...announcing a price drop would kill current sales of the 360's as everyone would hold out until the price drop actually occurred.
    • It's worth noting that Amazon is advertising a 360 deal where if you purchased a console you got $50 off the price of a game (Dead Rising, Madden 07, Oblivion and Lego Star Wars 2 - all listing at $49.99 on the site) - the deal ends today. While I know Amazon can afford to make great deals on stuff, the margins on new games are still very small, so someone is probably subsidizing this sale. If it's Microsoft, then it would imply that either a price drop or a bundle of 360 plus a game (which would be, in e

  • Maths (Score:3, Insightful)

    by MeanderingMind (884641) on Tuesday October 31 2006, @12:52PM (#16660817) Homepage Journal
    Japanese Allotment: 80k
    American Allotment: 400k

    Population of Japan: 127.42 million
    Previous Japanese Market Volume: 30.31 million (Dreamcast + Gamecube + PS2 in Japan)
    Number of PS3s per person: 1 per 1593
    Number of PS3s per gamer: 1 per 379
    Potential Market Share at Launch: 0.26% (Allotment / Previous Volume)

    Population of America: 300.00 million
    Previous American Market Volume: 70.8 million (Xbox + Gamecube + PS2)
    Number of PS3s per person: 1 per 750
    Number of PS3s per gamer: 1 per 177
    Potential Market Share at Launch: 0.56%

    Combined Potential Market Share: 0.47% (480k) [5.66% relative Market Share]
    Current 360 Market Share: 5.93% (6 million) [70.07% relative Market Share]
    Potential Wii Launch Market Share: 1.98% (2 million) [23.59% relative Market Share]

    Projected March 07 Market Share: 5.93% (6 million) [27.28% relative Market Share]
    360 March 07 Market Share: 9.89% (10 million) [45.46% relative Market Share]
    Wii March 07 Market Share: 5.93% (6 million) [27.28% relative Market Share]
    • 6 million by March for the Wii? Isn't that a little low? I thought that there were 4 million by year end. So another 2 million by March seems an underestimation.
      • I used the official company goals/projections. Unofficially Nintendo may have 6 million availible by January, and Sony may fall short of 6 million in March. It seemed unobjective to factor such things in.

        6 million for Nintendo is not bad at all, seeing as how the Xbox 360 has been out for almost a year now and has only recently crossed the 6 million mark. The rate at which they produce new consoles in their projections is quite steady and reasonable.

        What concerns me are the PS3 forecasts. If taken in two mo
      • Yes, it is low, but Nintendo as a company is very conservative and always releases lowball projections. Internally, they may expect to have 10 million consoles shipped by March 2007, but they will never publicly admit to such a number. Also, 6 million by March means after the initial launch, production will be steady through the rest of the fiscal year, in case they are unable to ramp up production beyond their current capabilities.

  • Microsoft's pricing strategy leaves room for the Wii to really take off. The Xbox 360 is not just competing with the PS3, it is also competing with Nintendo's console. High definition graphics don't matter to the majority of people who are currently using standard definition televisions. I don't think that demand for Zelda/Mario/Metroid is as high as the Nintendo faithful would have you believe, but the Wii will sell very well if its competitors prices are sky high.

    Why doesn't Microsoft kick Sony while

    • Could a Japanese developer releasing a launch title in Japan exclusively even break even on development costs with that limited amount of consoles?

      Good question but I think you are overly simplifying the situation. First of all the 80,000 units shipped (which could be nearly 5 million USD in sales of a single game at $60 a pop. I have no idea what the comparison is in yen) is only the initial launch allotment, and like all entertainment no one expects to profit solely on initial release. Within 6 months t

    • Could a Japanese developer releasing a launch title in Japan exclusively even break even on development costs with that limited amount of consoles?

      After New Zealand and Australia found Sony and other DVD player makers guilty of competition law violations through the DVD region coding system, and likely for other reasons as well, Sony has decided to make games on the PLAYSTATION 3 console region-free [ign.com]. This gives Japanese publishers greater incentive to sell games that don't involve a lot of text to gaijin

      • Sony has decided to make games on the PLAYSTATION 3 console region-free.

        And at the same time decided to put the #1 exporter of Japaneese games/systems out of buisness (Lik-Sang). So essentially you could play import Japaneese games on your PS3, unfortunately it will be difficult to actually import games.

        The initial poster's point still stands; if you're only going to release 100,000 systems then (because most game sales are made within the first 6 weeks of the game being released) the best you can do is sel

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