All purpose sales and sales rumors/anecdotes thread next gen+

[BoardBonobo]

Err both manufacturers historically use both kinds of numbers at different times...

This last time MS may have well been being disingenuous. It probably worked. "7 million to 5 million, not that much difference".

As a practical matter I imagine it's easier to use sold in. You'll have easy internal access to those numbers. Sold numbers, I am not sure how complete or up to date a picture they necessarily have. There's not even trackers in many of the smallest markets I assume.

I should or could also have said "sold in". As it's a stricter definition than "shipped". Shipped can be anything off the assembly line, sold-in is sold to retailers. Sony used to use the looser definition, but a few years back they all aligned to the sold-in definition, which is good for comparison purposes.

But Sony are now quoting sold numbers - as in customers hands. And not the sold in/shipped numbers that MS are using. It makes the MS numbers look artificially higher than they are in actual fact. Compared to the Sony numbers.

* Sony are saying they have 7+ million PS4s in customers hands and I guess from the MS shipped numbers they might have ~4.5 million in customers hands!?

It's a disingenuous little trick that Sony used quite a lot with the PS3 to start (and still do with the Vita and Phones).

 

[Wynix]

But Sony are now quoting sold numbers - as in customers hands. And not the sold in/shipped numbers that MS are using. It makes the MS numbers look artificially higher than they are in actual fact. Compared to the Sony numbers.

* Sony are saying they have 7+ million PS4s in customers hands and I guess from the MS shipped numbers they might have ~4.5 million in customers hands!?

It's a disingenuous little trick that Sony used quite a lot with the PS3 to start (and still do with the Vita and Phones).

Exactly.

I don't care who used it in the past, i don't want anyone using it now unless it's given out alongside sell-through numbers.

 

[zupallinere]

As a practical matter I imagine it's easier to use sold in. You'll have easy internal access to those numbers. Sold numbers, I am not sure how complete or up to date a picture they necessarily have. There's not even trackers in many of the smallest markets I assume..

Well there is a little thing called the internet and a thing called xbox live so there is likely some fairly decent numbers one way or the other.

 

[Rangers]

Exactly.

I don't care who used it in the past, i don't want anyone using it now unless it's given out alongside sell-through numbers.

That's stupid, these are the numbers they give in financials as it=revenue.

It's really a more solidly obtainable number than sold through. If Sony stops providing updates on how PS4 is selling (I'm pretty sure they weren't trumpeting early PS3 sales for example, or how Ms has stopped X1 sell through) then we have no way of knowing what they are. Short of...the quarterly sell in numbers.

At least as good an idea for transparency, far better imo, is if Sony hadn't mucked everything up a couple years ago by combining Vita/PSP and PS2/PS3, now PS3/PS4, shipments. This really puts a damper on our visibility. Rumor was they started this to hide crap Vita sales originally.

 

[Rangers]

MS hints at some oversupply and and inventory "drawdown".

UPDATE: The topic of Microsoft's Xbox business was barely raised during its investor call, with no analysts asking about it at all. Some of CFO Amy Hood's statements did imply, however, that there is more supply than demand for its Xbox consoles.

"We do expect to work through some inventory in Q4," said Hood, referring in this case to the period between April 1 - June 30, 2014. She also referred to "channel inventory drawdown for Xbox consoles," implying that manufacturing of Xbox consoles will slow or stop, to allow retailers time to work through existing inventory.

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/..._revenues__but_its_cost_cuts_into_profits.php

I'm not sure how much it'll mean. Maybe something like only 1.0m X1's will ship in Mar-Jun or something. I fully expect them to do something to boost sales at E3, but it will be too late to effect Mar-Jun much.

If they only ship 1.0 in Mar-Jun, they lose another .8 to X360. So gen over gen they'd be at something like 6.1:5. Vs the 5.1:3.2 through March. Which is 60% better for X1.

6.1:5 would be only 22% over 360 sales at that point (could be less if they ship less than 1.0 X1). Then they'd have an easy 1.0 comparison to 360 the next Q, and after that it would just get fuzzy, it was 4.4 360 for Oct-Dec 06. Which seems like a number X1 could handle, but there's so many variables that far out.

So they'll be coming back to 360 in the short term I suppose, but I think even something like 10%-20% better than 360 in the medium term isn't bad as it was a pretty successful console.

 

[DieH@rd]

MS hints at some oversupply and and inventory "drawdown".



http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/..._revenues__but_its_cost_cuts_into_profits.php

Very interesting announcement.

This just tells us that Xbone sales were very front loaded [just like WiiU's], that they already had problems on Dec31 when they reported 900K unsold consoles, and that they probably now have more or same number that remains unsold.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

If they only ship 1.0 in Mar-Jun, they lose another .8 to X360. So gen over gen they'd be at something like 6.1:5. Vs the 5.1:3.2 through March. Which is 60% better for X1.

6.1:5 would be only 22% over 360 sales at that point (could be less if they ship less than 1.0 X1).

IMO those ratios are far less telling than the trends. XB360 was supply constrained at first, and sold in increasing numbers. XB1 isn't supply constrained and is selling in increasingly lower amounts. So although XB1 had a better start than 360 due to better supply, general performance seems to be lower.

 

[Wynix]

That's stupid, these are the numbers they give in financials as it=revenue.

It's really a more solidly obtainable number than sold through. If Sony stops providing updates on how PS4 is selling (I'm pretty sure they weren't trumpeting early PS3 sales for example, or how Ms has stopped X1 sell through) then we have no way of knowing what they are. Short of...the quarterly sell in numbers.

At least as good an idea for transparency, far better imo, is if Sony hadn't mucked everything up a couple years ago by combining Vita/PSP and PS2/PS3, now PS3/PS4, shipments. This really puts a damper on our visibility. Rumor was they started this to hide crap Vita sales originally.

I wasn't very clear, i meant to say that i don't want anyone to only release sold-in, it should come in addition to the sell-through and shipped numbers.
I agree that Sony have been deceptive by combining various platforms together and i don't care for it.

New info

Here is a quote from someone with retailer knowledge concerning the XB1 rebate(trusted GAF user):

Yeah, Best Buy and other retailers don't make those kinds of deals without having the backup of Vendor Credit and other rebates associated with manufacturer coverage. Unless a product has reached "End of Life", where it's considered at risk and useless, if a product is discounted like that, it's because we've received assurance of cost coverage. We have monthly "SSB" or Store Send Back shipments, where product is evaluated at a corporate level, and if it's not met the demand anticipated, it gets either reallocated to stores where it sells, or it gets sent back to the manufacturer for a refund.

And it's been interesting to follow up on sales, now that the PS4 is becoming more readily stocked... XB1 numbers have started to stagnate again, or at least drop off, with the PS4 typically having a 2:1 sales average per week in every store in a district. Sony shifted a LOT of inventory our way last month, and it looks like that has continued to remain a high priority, though I hope the EU starts getting more inventory, because as much as it's still selling well, the demand overseas is still crazy.

 

[Xbat]

if microsoft had anywhere near the same production as sony they could have millions of Xbox one's in warehouses somewhere.

 

[DieH@rd]

They probably do, which also means that they have millions of Kinect sensors that they cant easily throw out. Famousmortimer mentioned from his MS sources that Matrick was very focused on Kinect, that he ordered Xbone+Kinect manufacturing contracts that are very long.

IMO, MS will slash $50 off the price on E3/Gamescom, and get rid of Kinect in Spring/Fall of 2015.

 

[Dave Baumann]

MS hints at some oversupply and and inventory "drawdown".

Where does it state which XBOX this relates to?

 

[ArcticCircle]

if microsoft had anywhere near the same production as sony they could have millions of Xbox one's in warehouses somewhere.

Mike Pachter said that MS made deal something like million consoles per month (I assume including kinect) for 12 months. Bonus Round episode "who won the holidays"
http://www.gametrailers.com/full-episodes/93qcsf/bonus-round-who-won-the-holidays-

IIRC, MS used both Foxconn and Flextronics assembly lines. So real number might be bit less or bit more, depending if suggested 10% Foxxconn and 90% Flextronics is true. So 12 months means roughly 12 million consoles by the next fall. There could be something like 3 million consoles in warehouses by the end of this month.

I'm not sure if MS can weasel out of the 12 months deal early. I think better plan might be to cut price at E3, bundle up some games thru the rest of the year and hope for the big holiday sales.

 

[AlNom]

Where does it state which XBOX this relates to?

Just waiting on a decent price drop for that 360 backup unit.

/panic about no more 360s

 

[Dave Baumann]

As an FYI - you may want to pay note to the AMD call as well:

http://seekingalpha.com/article/214...sses-q1-2014-results-earnings-call-transcript

Vivek Arya - Bank of America Merrill Lynch
Thanks for taking my question. I actually had one short-term and then longer-term question. So on the shorter-term, I'm curious, what's your sense of the inventory of game console or chips in the channel? I mean you certainly had a very strong ramp. But if my math is right, by Q2 you would have probably shipped over 20 million console chips, which is I imagine, you know, 4 million, 5 million above the potential sales of those consoles. Is it that we should be expecting, you know, seeing those second half just because of the lag between the new ship and when the consoles ship? Or just if you could give us a sense of what the inventory situation is of all these console chips.

Lisa Su - SVP and General Manager of Global Business Units
Sure, Vivek. This is Lisa. Let me give you some guidance there.

So in terms of how the game consoles have behaved, I mean they've actually done quite well. There were some seasonality in the first quarter coming off of a very strong holiday season, but we've been pleased with the results.

And relative to inventory, we don't see any significant inventory build-up in the channel. So our expectation for semi-custom is that the second half in terms of units will be higher than the first half as we're going into the second holiday season. And everything that we see is that the consoles are selling through nicely.

 

[DieH@rd]

20 million console chips is a number that was speculated by analyst, not hard fact. And AMD will not be affected by slower shipment rate of Xbone consoles. MS will will purchase the same amount of chips no matter what.

 

[Dave Baumann]

Read the actual answer relating to channel and forecast.

 

[Deleted member 11852]

Read the actual answer relating to channel and forecast.

Interesting. So in terms of channel inventory and sell through AMD consider the channel from fab-to-console-production-to-retail/customer, rather than AMD having a supply to customer (Microsoft/Sony) channel then those clients having their own production-to-retail/customer channels.

 

[Deleted member 11852]

Having a supply sitting around "waiting" to be sold to MS/Sony wouldn't make much sense.

I guess that depends on what the terms are between AMD and their clients. If their clients want chips then it may make sense for AMD to produce these infrequently but in volume (so as to maximum fab plant time) then stock and sell these demand required.

But without knowing if the clients are contacted to buy certain/minimum quantities over time and where the chips are fabbed and what's the plant's flexibility is, it's guesswork unless Dave wants to drop some hints

 

[AlNom]

FuturePast Edit:

Having a supply sitting around "waiting" to be sold to MS/Sony wouldn't make much sense.

I guess that depends on what the terms are between AMD and their clients. If their clients want chips then it may make sense for AMD to produce these infrequently but in volume (so as to maximum fab plant time) then stock and sell these demand required.

But without knowing if the clients are contacted to buy certain/minimum quantities over time and where the chips are fabbed and what's the plant's flexibility is, it's guesswork unless Dave wants to drop some hints

hm... I would think though that MS/Sony would have a pretty clear idea for fabrication/production lead times at this point (especially required when planning for launch), so the way it's done is that if they want it (on some schedule over the next while), they explicitly order it or spend some dollar amount to cover immediate order costs. Well, I suppose my point is that AMD needs to have the money to put orders to the fab responsibly.

 

[Deleted member 11852]

Well, I suppose my point is that AMD needs to have the money to put orders to the fab responsibly.

Sure, this is why it'd help to know how the contracts between Microsoft and Sony and AMD are setup. If, for example, Microsoft agreed to purchase x million APUs for the first 12 months at one rate (low because of guaranteed volume), and any more at perhaps a different rate (higher because of not being anticipated and AMD having to find a place to fab those), then getting that first x million fabled in one go would make sense - especially if moneybags Microsoft pay up front.

Whichever I do find it interesting that AMD are commenting on console sell through.