PS4 loses Black Friday console war

[GhostStories]

I work at a large retail store and we only had like 5 Playstation 4's in stock for Black Friday. Compared to like 40-50 XboxOnes. It's really no surprise to me that Playstation lost out based on that. But we're just one store so who knows what other places had more.

 

[dragoonblade]

First, my understanding of the issue was that Sony didn't send that many consoles out and Microsoft shipped a lot of Xbox One's. Second it doesn't matter who sells more when. My feeling is still that we have to wait and see what happens in a year from release. That's when we'll know who did better.

 

[dieselfit]

First, my understanding of the issue was that Sony didn't send that many consoles out and Microsoft shipped a lot of Xbox One's. Second it doesn't matter who sells more when. My feeling is still that we have to wait and see what happens in a year from release. That's when we'll know who did better.

This is exactly it. Sony didn't exactly meet the demand for some reason and it wasn't available at all locations. It's not even available in my country and it's been nearly or more than a month since the release. Usually we would see the new consoles here by now. So if they met the demand then maybe they would have sold equally as much but really it doesn't matter who sells when, it's the end result of the total sales.

 

[GhostStories]

Do you think that by using that tactic Sony has peaked interest in the Playstation4? By not sending out enough consoles it could appear to the customer that it's such a hot item that it has sold out. I could definitely see that as a ploy they are secretly using although I'm sure it would be denied.

 

[dieselfit]

GhostStories that is a good plot, the headlines they would be after is "PS4 Sold out!" but if anyone was smart they would ask "But how many were available?". It's a tricky tactic it could be possible and I think this might be the case knowing how much money they could make from holding off the availability of it.

 

[Stuck_X_Button]

I could see Sony doing that. There's a long console life span ahead, so they could afford to put out fewer consoles to create the illusion that there was a shortage because of demands. To people who simply follow console availability via the local news (which is generally vague on sales specifics) would probably pay attention to know if the console will be available. All they would know is there are no consoles at the moment and there will be more available on X-day.

 

[Nymph]

That makes very little sense from a business standpoint, because the moment the product is sold out, there is literally no more to be sold, and thus no more money to be made if they truly were trying to set a record in sales, or are "warring" with Microsoft. They (Sony) could very well be estimating off of the PS3's launch sales, which were less than spectacular, so to save everyone time they may have held back. Either way, they will have to increase their quotas within the coming days so there really is no telling what they were actually thinking. Their marketing department is much smarter than that, though. But who knows? Maybe it is just that Microsoft's marketing department is smarter.

 

[dragoonblade]

I'm not sure that Sony held back a bit when it came to how many consoles they released if they were still worried about the early Ps3 sales re-occurred. I'm thinking though that it's simply that Microsoft sent out way more consoles then Sony did. Both consoles are highly wanted but whoever released more won. And in this case that was Microsoft.