Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments
Search

News for nerds, stuff that matters

Slashdot Log In

Log In

Create Account  |  Retrieve Password

Playstation 3 Sells Out At Japanese Launch

Posted by Zonk on Sat Nov 11, 2006 01:46 PM
from the deeply-shocking dept.
PlayStation (Games) Sony
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.
+ -
story

Related Stories

[+] PS3 Japanese Estimates Down, No 360 Price Drop 84 comments
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.
[+] The Dark Side of the PlayStation 3 Launch 505 comments
An anonymous reader writes "Kotaku is running an article prompted by an email from a foreign student in Japan. The reader unveils the sad reality of the modern gaming industry. Japanese businessmen made ample use of homeless people and Chinese nationals to obtain PS3s for re-sale. There was also a large amount of pushing and shoving, some fights, and almost no police presence at the most crowded stores." From the article: "Based on my observations of the first twenty PS3s sold at Bic Camera, they were all purchased by Chinese nationals, none of whom bought any software. After making their purchase, television crews asked for interviews but all were declined. These temporary owners of PS3s would then make their way down the street where their bosses waited. After several minutes, a dozen PS3s were rounded up, as their Japanese business manager paid out cash to those who waited in line for them. I witnessed a homeless-looking Chinese man, in his sixties or seventies get paid 20,000 yen for his services and was then sent away." Update: 11/12 05:40 GMT by Z : You're right. Sony only shares a portion of the blame here. Offsides on my part.
[+] Hardware: PS3 Opened For Pictures 219 comments
An anonymous reader writes "As all of you surely know by now, the PS3 has just been released in Japan. What you might find interesting, however, is that among those 80 000 happy PS3 owners (or self-appointed resellers) was at least one who decided it was his or her sacred mission to crack this puppy open for a peek inside. About the article, it is in Japanese. Someone who knows enough of this fabled language of wonder well enough would do well to offer some translations, although I don't really suspect that the story is the most important thing here..."
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.

Playstation 3 Sells Out At Japanese Launch 50 Comments More /

 Full
 Abbreviated
 Hidden
More
Loading... please wait.

  • The very definition of "hardcore" (Score:5, Funny)

    by antifoidulus (807088) on Saturday November 11 2006, @01:50PM (#16806802) Homepage Journal
    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!

    • Re:The very definition of "hardcore" (Score:4, Funny)

      by RonnyJ (651856) on Saturday November 11 2006, @01:59PM (#16806878)
      There's an even better quote here:

      Apparently one of the campers called in sick (for two weeks?), and had to postpone his engagement to divert the ring fund to a PlayStation 3, while another guy quit his job altogether.

      http://www.engadget.com/2006/11/10/ps3-hopefuls-pa rt-ii/ [engadget.com]

      • Re:The very definition of "hardcore" (Score:5, Insightful)

        by archen (447353) on Saturday November 11 2006, @03:16PM (#16807404)
        There's also a nice gem of a quote in the user comments in the BBC article.

        since Sony has messed about with the European launch date, I have flown all the way to Japan to get my hands on one.

        To myself I think - it must be nice to be able to afford to buy a PS3. Must be nice to be able to afford to go to Japan. Lots of things to see there like districts in Tokyo, shrines, Japanese food. Yeah, interesting that you'd just fly to Japan, get a PS3 then fly home. I'd probably sell the thing, but if you have enough money to fly to Japan for no reason other than to buy a game console, you obviously don't need the money!
    • Hm, now we might be able to blame Sony for killing a man.

    • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Maslow's "hierarchy" of needs is, presumably, long-term. I often skip meals if I've got better things to do. My body can go several days without food, as can most people's, especially in the West/North.

      (And as any knowledge worker will tell you, for any data problem, there's a hierarchical representation that is simple, clear, practical and wrong. Essentially any time you see a neat hierarchy, something is being over-simplified.)

  • Sony's Strategy (Score:5, Insightful)

    by d3ik (798966) on Saturday November 11 2006, @01:52PM (#16806818)
    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
  • Sony are going to be touting the "fastest sellout ever", I mean, if I had only a single console to sell, and I sold it straight away, wouldnt that be the fastest sellout ever? I'm really wondering how Sony are going to do when they actually are able to produce more. Will the PS3 be a success?

  • If they're so technology hungry.. (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Channard (693317) on Saturday November 11 2006, @01:54PM (#16806842) Journal
    .. how come only one of them seems to have had the sense to bring along a portable console to play with while waiting? God only knows what it'll be like when the store I work at gets these in. When the 360's came in, we had people qeueing in the dark from 9PM to 9AM in the morning - just to get core consoles!

  • I am not surprised (Score:5, Insightful)

    by MemoryDragon (544441) on Saturday November 11 2006, @02:03PM (#16806928)
    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.

          • Not really, unless you want to call everybody who plans to purchase a HD TV this year an outlier. That would be how many million outliers?

            Your logic is a bit problematic. How does your statement I personally won't bat an eye about dropping $600 on this box. After all, I'm picking up a $2,500 flat screen tv to go with it. equal to everybody who plans to purchase a HD TV this year?

            Hint: To get you started, first look at the pricing of the models that all these people will be buying. Ask yourself - will most

  • Too Bad You Can't Get It (Score:3, Informative)

    by heli0 (659560) on Saturday November 11 2006, @02:03PM (#16806930)
    "there might be a new hot toy on everyone's Christmas list here in the states."

    Is there anyone who ever doubted that the PS3 would be sold out until Spring? I assumed that with all of the stories about people planning to sell it for $3,000 on eBay that this was common knowledge by now.

  • Big freakin' deal. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by EvilCabbage (589836) on Saturday November 11 2006, @02:14PM (#16807000) Homepage
    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?

  • And in terms of all system sales... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by yeoua (86835) on Saturday November 11 2006, @02:20PM (#16807038)
    http://www.joystiq.com/2006/11/10/japanese-hardwar e-sales-30-october-5-november-incredibly-inn/ [joystiq.com]

    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.
  • They sold 80,000 units in a day! Huzzah! They can only make money as long as they have units to sell. Only over the long term will we be able to say that it was a success.

    Of course this will just drum up buzz and people will pay some lucky bastard on eBay 5 times the retail price for one.
  • Considering every time Dragon Warrior or a Final Fantasy game comes out, they sell 2 million copies in the first week-end, of course they're going to sell 80,000 PS3s.

    I'd like to see a breakdown of High end-vs-Low end units. Does anyone have those numbers?

  • I'm Big in Japan (Score:5, Interesting)

    by rhesuspieces00 (804354) on Saturday November 11 2006, @03:23PM (#16807462) Homepage
    EVERY console made by a Japanese company sells out at launch in Japan. The fucking VisualBoy sold out in Japan.

  • The Big picture (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Dr. Eggman (932300) on Saturday November 11 2006, @04:21PM (#16807952)
    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 [1up.com] 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.

  • 80,000 - at rrp? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by goldcd (587052) on Saturday November 11 2006, @06:01PM (#16808808) Homepage
    LikSang could have shifted that

  • As usual... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by BJH (11355) on Saturday November 11 2006, @07:12PM (#16809446)
    ...PC Watch bought one and took it apart [impress.co.jp].

    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.

  • Is anyone really surprised? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by jdubois79 (227349) on Saturday November 11 2006, @07:21PM (#16809514)
    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.

  • Chinese people buying the japanese PS3s (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Zangief (461457) on Saturday November 11 2006, @08:39PM (#16810002) Homepage Journal
    Kotaku has an interesting report. [kotaku.com] Apparently, some people hired chinese poor people to stand in the lines and buy PS3s for resale.
    • Not really, I can't see why anyone would be happy with sony getting 80k units out on "launch day". I'm pretty sure their sales numbers weren't as good as the numbers on xbox 360's launch day, they just had so many fewer units that they sold out sooner. The mocking won't stop here.

      • Re:The end of Sony bashing? (Score:5, Informative)

        by shoptroll (544006) on Saturday November 11 2006, @02:24PM (#16807060)
        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.

    • Re:The end of Sony bashing? (Score:5, Funny)

      by William_Lee (834197) on Saturday November 11 2006, @02:00PM (#16806894)
      Hopefully, this story will reduce the amount of people randomly bashing Sony (and how their PS3 will "obviously" fail) for no reason. Right now I'm just happy for Sony and the rate of sales they've had. Aren't you?

      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 nazi's have just taken France.. why don't you stop complaining about them and Hitler, just be happy for them .. just once would ya.
    • those are in-game graphics? That's actually pretty impressive, maybe we will finally have the Toy Story graphics Sony promised for the ps2 [ign.com]:
      "...we could see worlds that could equal what was in use in the movie Toy Story."

      I'm still not buying a PS3, but a Xbox360 may be in my future depending on what the new games look like.
    • "Unless it has a game where you can make little school girls dance to your music!"

      So. Fucking. Japanese.

      Dear Lord, does somebody havea rusty spoon I can borrow? I need to gouge out my own eyeballs after seeing that saccharine hell.

      And I actually thought I was an otaku...
    • Obligatory VGCats [vgcats.com], on topic for once!

      • Re:Yeah, Hot new Xmas Item... (Score:4, Interesting)

        by nugx (994844) on Saturday November 11 2006, @02:15PM (#16807010)
        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'
        • Actually, that's not a particularly good term, since it is both inaccurate and emotionally loaded. Asking friends to shill your PS3 auction on eBay would be "fraudent demand." This is more like "artificial scarcity." Sony might be acting foolishly, but certainly not fraudulently, unless they are secretly paying people to go buy the units in order to ensure they sell out.
          • No, he's absolutely right. If there were a couple of million in the channel, there would be no excited crazy reports on the radio, TV, and internet about the people who were in line to get a PS3. This kind of crap makes Grandma's think this is a must have thing for their kid and while it doesn't spur end number demand, it certainly spurs false excitement and false "rush to get it" and even "wow, there aren't many so it's OK to pay this much or I won't get one" types of mentality.
            • IOW, it drives up the market price. Which is what I said. Those grandmas already knew that the kids wanted a PS3 (or at the very least would've heard about it regardless of what the media was saying), it's just that they weren't willing to pay $600 until they heard about the low supply. (And I would argue that a lot of those grandmas would've been willing to pay $600 even if there were millions of units available. The going price on eBay currently appears to be about $1500 or more, nearly three times re

            • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

              by Pluvius (734915)
              Lowered supply in itself has no effect on demand. This is basic economics, which, unlike psychology, is actually relevant to the argument at hand. Certainly a lowered supply combined with a fixed price will increase sales, but this is because the fixed price is well below the ideal price point, not because of an increased demand.

              Rob

                • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

                  by Pluvius (734915)
                  1. The precise reason why people demand diamonds so much is because they're scarce; the scarcity enhances their beauty, and the purpose of a diamond is to look pretty. This doesn't apply to the PS3; very few people would buy one simply because not many of them exist. Especially since there's a near-guarantee that there will be more made available soon.

                  2. People would still demand diamonds, they just wouldn't demand them at current prices.

                  Now, I will admit that demand has been boosted somewhat, but not t

                • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

                  by Pluvius (734915)
                  Lowered supply (whether through deliberate withholding of goods or through production problems) shifts the supply curve to the left and does absolutely nothing to the demand curve. Look at your textbook again.

                  Rob
                  • Except for their being an almost unlimited supply of one-of-a-kind cat shits, along with the abundance of substitutes from dogs, horses, squirrels, deer, rabbit and countless others.
    • Nah, not yet. Just look at most of the other replies to this article. Cognitive dissonance is a powerful thing, especially amongst console fanboys...

      Rob

    • Re:Technical Issues Already (Score:5, Interesting)

      by toopc (32927) on Saturday November 11 2006, @02:27PM (#16807076)
      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.

    • Re:Meh... (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Ash-Fox (726320) on Sunday November 12 2006, @06:36AM (#16812718) Homepage
      Sony's first line of product ALWAYS SUCKS.
      I disagree, most of their products 'suck' in general.
      There is always some minor flaw in them that they never catch in beta. But by releasing a limited supply of consoles on the first run, they can minimize damages when that error is fixed. o_o'
      Sony won't know about it until it's too late, after all, the PS3 units were only bought to be resold [kotaku.com].

All trademarks and copyrights on this page are owned by their respective owners. Comments are owned by the Poster. The Rest © 1997-2009 Geeknet, Inc.