Quote:
Originally Posted by 4Tran
Actually, launch sales in the first couple of days of availability mean quite a lot for the short term viability of a product. A fantastic launch is the best of marketing tools, and it will dictate things like retail floor space, supply chain support, post-launch production and so on. If a launch wasn't extremely important, companies wouldn't go to such great pains to make them run as smoothly as possible.
If the PS4 had sold out only after being available for a week or two, then the launch wouldn't have been as successful or as significant. The fact that they sold out immediately sends a much stronger signal to all of its business partners.
|
But they ALWAYS sell out. Even the Wii U sold out. Heck, the only "console" that I remember not selling out at launch was probably the Ouya and that's a completely different game. If the PS4 had managed to not sell out at launch either Sony needed to bow out of the race or something was going very wrong with the economy. 1929 crash levels of wrong.
What really matters is the Launch "window" sales (first 3 months). Those are the ones that dictate retail space, third-party support, etc.
Quote:
Originally Posted by 4Tran
We should know by the end of the week, but I think that Microsoft has about 1 million units world wide at launch. Sony should have about 2.5 million world wide by the end of next week.
|
If those numbers pan out (and right now I wouldn't be surprised if they did) Sony shows an outstanding logistical ability. I'm impressed.
Quote:
Originally Posted by 4Tran
The Wii did have a lot of third party support. That support was different from the PS360, but the user base of the Wii was different as well.
|
I wouldn't call publishing what amounts to Shovelware and refusing to publish/doing fairly limited runs of genuinely great games third-party support. There were companies that made some money selling to clueless parents looking for Wii games but that's about it. Some publishers thought it was an el-dourado but quickly realised that working with Nintendo was way harder than the peanuts they were getting from clueless shoppers buying crap.