Nintendo of America President Reggie Fils-Aime has again warned that they may struggle to meet the huge demand for the Nintendo Wii this holiday.
To quote: Fils-Aime was cautious on whether the company would be able to meet demand again this holiday.
“I don’t know if we’ll be able to, but were we to get in a car right now and go to 100 retail locations in the San Francisco area, we would not be able to find a Wii in at least 60 of those stores,” he says. “Our hope is that by next week, the Friday after Thanksgiving, and on Dec. 23, you’ll be able to find a Wii.”
Analysts anticipate strong sales for the Wii despite predictions of a broad decline in spending on consumer electronics. “It will sell well,” said Lazard Capital equity research analyst Colin Sebastian in an e-mail. “The console remain in high demand, and I expect retailers will be using Wii’s to attract store traffic throughout the shopping period.”... More »
It's appears the pricy Pioneer BDP-09FD now has some competition from Sony.
Sony surprised the industry at the CEDIA consumer electronics show in Denver by introducing expensive new Blu-ray players instead of cheaper ones. One of the new models is the BDP-S5000ES which will be offered worldwide in December for $2,000.
Andy Parsons, senior VP of product planning at Pioneer Home Entertainment Group and U.S. chairman of the Blu-ray Disc Assn. Promotions Committee, said that "Blu-ray player sales were 50% ahead of total 2007 sales."
Parsons also countered reports that said sales weren’t meeting expectations, and said that any problems in meeting expectations were due to supply shortages.
With PS3 sales overtaking Xbox 360 sales in the last couple of months there have been many articles and reports flying around the Internet saying that the PS3 is finally starting to catch up to the 360 and may possibly even overtake it soon.
Interesting concept, except for the fact that it’s flawed.
The current sales of the Xbox 360 and PS3 on VGchartz are as follows:
Xbox 360: 20.44 Million
PlayStation 3: 15.05 Million
The thing is, that if you look at the console sales, you can see that the gap in sales between the PS3 and Xbox 360 is still roughly the same as it was when the PS3 was launched.
This means that in the current state, the sales of the PS3 are at best only matching the sales of the Xbox 360 even though sales for Sony’s console have picked up recently.
The PS3 is indeed becoming more popular and the past problems with the Xbox 360’s hardware have made quite a difference. However, we a... More »
In an interview with Next-Gen, Microsoft has shed a bit more light on why Xbox 360 is having supply issues.
Supply constraints or not, Microsoft can't be too ecstatic that the PlayStation 3 has outsold its console for the second month in a row in February. But the purveyor of all things Xbox expects to get supply back in line in April.
Xbox 360 group product manager Aaron Greenberg told Next-Gen on Thursday just prior to the release of the NPD Group's February US sales data that the shortages are still rooted in larger than expected holiday sales.
Greenberg said that Microsoft's "number jocks" assumed that everyone who would typically buy an Xbox 360 in November and December would instead buy it in September or October after the September launch of Halo 3.
"We were wrong. What happened was the normal seasonality. November was twice the size of October and December was twice the size of November," Greenberg said. "What happened with t... More »
During an interview with NextGen.biz, Microsoft's David Dennis answered some questions about the company's recent problems with hardware shortages. According to Dennis, the problem was simply that the demand was much greater than expected.
"We saw the sales outpacing our forecasts as far back as November," he explained, "but because we had inventory built up in advance of the holiday, it really didn’t become a shortage issue until the latter half of December.
The sales continued to be robust through January, so it just continued to worsen." Dennis went on to say that Microsoft has increased production, and he expects that they should be able to catch up with demand by March.
Dennis also explained that while the PlayStation 3 was able to sell more units in January, he believes that this was mainly due to the supply constraints faced by Microsoft. "I hate to predict," he said "but I certainly believe that once we get the supply out there, with... More »
In a fiery opinion piece, game designer/author Ian Bogost examines NPD chart trends to suggest that Sony's lack of unified message on PS3, Blu-ray and the 'average consumer' is rendering ineffective its pitch to users.
Sony is a global conglomerate which is significantly different from its hardware competitors in the video game industry. It makes consumer electronics ranging from telephones to computers to GPS units.
It publishes video games, movies, and music. It also maintains an army of support businesses, including banks, insurance providers, facility management companies, staffing services, and packaging providers.
The business strategy makes sense: control as much of the market for both electronics and the media we use them for. That’s why Sony purchased CBS Records and Columbia Pictures in the late 1980s; they wanted to own part of the content people played on their Walkmans and VCRs.
Microsoft Corp (MSFT.O: Quote, Profile, Research) is seeing shortages of its Xbox 360 video game console in the United States, as the company failed to anticipate strong post-holiday demand, an executive said on Wednesday.
"We are really running short of product here in the United States," Jeff Bell, head of global marketing for Microsoft's games business, said in an interview. "You could say we misjudged demand."
The comments came a day before market research firm NPD is expected to release video game sales data for January and Bell said Microsoft was hoping to "manage expectations."
"We're literally out of stock in many stores. We think this will have an impact on our sales," Bell said. "It may cause the overall industry number to be down a little bit.
"Retailers have been really upset, they are on allocation. It is a lag I think we're seeing in January and that may continue into February, then as spring ramps up, we'll be able to m... More »
The PSP is becoming one of the hottest gifts this holiday season. And for good reason too. The slimmer, lighter and generally more awesome PSP-2000 system has reignited sales of Sony's portable, and supposedly they're becoming quite hard to find in stores. In fact, PSP systems are currently outselling DS systems on amazon.com. Various CAG members report:
"They are impossible to find in most stores, at least in my area." - SaraAB
"It is true about PSP selling surpringly well. I suggested either PSP core or Daxter bundle as a gift for me, and in the past couple weeks it had been generally hard to find or very quickly selling when available." - H22A
"The PSP has been OOS for a long time (Core & Daxter) both B&M & Online. I've been trying to get one for weeks (and a decent deal) and TRU, Target, BB, CC, Amazon, Walmart, Gamestop, Barnes & Noble have all been OOS and then got restocked but sold out very quickly." - J7.
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