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

[Shifty Geezer]

People are likely profiting on PS4 on ebay, I'm not really sure what we're arguing.

That eBay (or any other open market) pricing is evidence of higher demand for PS4 than XB1. The money the sellers do or don't make is immaterial. In a free market, demand drives up price. In retail stores, price is likely fixed somewhat by retail deals or public relations (a store that listed a console for $400 a week ago can't realistically put it up to $500 without getting some serious negative PR) so we can't look to retail stores to use price as an indicator of demand. Independent markets where price isn't so constrained, especially where the buyer chooses their own price and places a value on their own demand, is an effective barometer of demand. It's a well known and respected approach and was used last console launch in exactly the same way. XB360s were selling for far higher on eBay than stores showing demand was higher, and MS could probably have got away with charging more.

 

[RudeCurve]

As Rangers mentioned earlier most likely scalpers buying up all the cheap stock on Amazon with free shipping and no tax then flipping them on Ebay. Demand hasn't changed...it's the same it's just people are making a profit from dumb people who didn't have a chance at buying them on Amazon.

 

[-tkf-]

As Rangers mentioned earlier most likely scalpers buying up all the cheap stock on Amazon with free shipping and no tax then flipping them on Ebay. Demand hasn't changed...it's the same it's just people are making a profit from dumb people who didn't have a chance at buying them on Amazon.

So you agree the demand is higher for the ps4?

 

[RudeCurve]

If you have one hundred people looking to legitimately buy a PS4 on Amazon but couldn't buy them because 25 scalpers bought up all the supply did demand actually increase or stayed the same?

 

[DuckThor Evil]

Would you agree that by the time of the end of the second fiscal year that I used for the PS1, 2, and 3 that all of those consoles were widely available? Because that is why I used that as a cut-off point. The time frame itself is irrelevant.

You seem fixated on the ideas that I am somehow comparing sales. I am not. How could I when I am comparing shipped to sold numbers? I am trying to show that shipping that many of each of those consoles was more than able to satisfy all of the demand for those consoles up to that point and comparing that to Sony already shipping at least 4.2M PS4s and still, apparently, not being able to meet demand.

If I knew a way to find out the exact number of PS1, 2 & 3's that Sony shipped at the time that each of those consoles became demand limited than I would use those numbers. But since I don't I used what was available. I suspect that those numbers were each less than 4.2M, though.

I agree with regards to the PS1 and 3, it's not true for PS2. It was quite hard to still get a PS2 after four months off its European launch. You could get one, but it wasn't readily available yet at that point. It had a huge demand. You can see from the shipped numbers that they were flying off the shelves in their third fiscal year. The production numbers had to ramp up to really high. I'm only fixated on using these shipped numbers as a point to your argument not the argument itself.

 

[-tkf-]

If you have one hundred people looking to legitimately buy a PS4 on Amazon but couldn't buy them because 25 scalpers bought up all the supply did demand actually increase or stayed the same?

Yep the demand is higher than the supply, so market capitalism strikes, on the other hand the demand for xb1 is lower than the supply so the market capitalism strikes there as well. Or do you have any other reason why the xb1 isn't seeing the same prices?

 

[RudeCurve]

Yep the demand is higher than the supply, so market capitalism strikes, on the other hand the demand for xb1 is lower than the supply so the market capitalism strikes there as well. Or do you have any other reason why the xb1 isn't seeing the same prices?

No demand is not higher because the 25 scalpers bought up ALL the supply but demand still remains at 100 people. The number of people who wanted one did not increase. Let's say the supply is 100 units total which was how many Amazon got in the latest batch so each scalper bought 4. Now those 100 legitimate potential buyers who missed out on Amazon go on Ebay and see PS4's being sold and are under the impression that supply is lower than demand because of their experience with Amazon so they try to snatch one up even when bidding goes over MSRP. It's pure perception the way I see it.

 

[-tkf-]

No demand is not higher because the 25 scalpers bought up ALL the supply but demand is still 100 people. The number of people who wanted one did not increase. Let's say the supply is 100 units total which was how many Amazon got in the latest batch so each scalper bought 4. Now those 100 legitimate potential buyers who missed out on Amazon go on Ebay and see PS4's being sold and are under the impression that supply is lower than demand because of their experience with Amazon so they try to snatch one up even when bidding goes over MSRP. It's pure perception the way I see it.

So why aren't the scalpers buying xb1? If the demand is just as high they can do the same... right..

 

[RudeCurve]

So why aren't the scalpers buying xb1? If the demand is just as high they can do the same... right..

Because MS has plenty of supply so nobody is desperate/stupid enough to pay over MSRP.

 

[JPT]

So selling 4.2M and having very few available in stores and being sold for more than retail prices on ebay etc is worse than selling 3M and having (anecdotally) plenty in stores and being sold for less than retail on ebay.... On top of that you are not able to produce enough to keep stores as well stocked as the other other company, but you are most likely producing more and your next shipment is already sold out/pre-ordered.

Is this a correct summery?

 

[-tkf-]

Because MS has plenty of supply so nobody is desperate/stupid enough to pay over MSRP.

So the argument is that Microsoft is supplying more consoles than Sony buy they sell just as many?

 

[RudeCurve]

So the argument is that Microsoft is supplying more consoles than Sony buy they sell just as many?

I'd say MS is supplying more AND there's slightly less demand due to price and the perception that PS4 is the more desirable console.

That's just my own interpretation of the situation.

 

[-tkf-]

I'd say MS is supplying more AND there's slightly less demand due to price and the perception that PS4 is the more desirable console.

That's just my own interpretation of the situation.

That is a fair assessment and you may very well be right, Microsoft should be able to supply more since they launched in fewer countries and isn't selling as much as PS4 in those countries either.

And now we can just wait for the next sales numbers and find out what is what

 

[Averagejoe]

As Rangers mentioned earlier most likely scalpers buying up all the cheap stock on Amazon with free shipping and no tax then flipping them on Ebay. Demand hasn't changed...it's the same it's just people are making a profit from dumb people who didn't have a chance at buying them on Amazon.

I don't think that make sense,because the PS4 is basically sold out every where,i went to walmart yesterday and there are non,is the story on all stores y visit either walk in or online,the only place Ebay and they have like 1,900 results for PS4,i think Amazon get much more units than that,alto there is always people trying to make a quick dollar i don't think is a trend that will affect only Amazon.

 

[Averagejoe]

Because MS has plenty of supply so nobody is desperate/stupid enough to pay over MSRP.

MS has a good supply because they lack the PS4 demand,the xbox one sales apparently peaked,and they are starting to slow down,which is why you can walk in on most store and get one,like i say i was yesterday at walmart and they have xbo but no PS4.

Supply is affected by demand,if your demand is very high you will have few or no units to sell,if your demand i good but not great,you will have units in most stores,and if your demand is slow you will have units in all stores.

The wii pass for it,and the demand was high enough to keep stores dry of units i still remember,when you could easy find a PS3.

I think the demand for the xbox one die down,and now they will sell normal numbers,the PS4 still hasn't reach that point.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

No demand is not higher because the 25 scalpers bought up ALL the supply but demand still remains at 100 people.

Demand isn't so much an absolute figure of wanted units rather than a 'pressure' working on consumers to buy. If you sell 1000 units of a product, the number of people wanting that product could have been 1000 or 2000 or 1 million. Heck, if you've hopeful scalpers buying the 1000 units hoping to make a fast buck, the number of people wanting one might be only 10!

So sales don't correlate to demand, only to units sold. Demand is gauged by how much people want that product, the pressure working on them, which is determined by how much they are willing to spend. Because with any product, any interested consumer who can't get one can either pay more or wait or buy something else. People buying PS4's off eBay have the option to wait and buy them at a lower price from retailers, but they don't want to wait. The pressure to own now is higher, and that's what we mean by 'high demand', which is reflected in higher prices in a free market, and then can go on to produce high volume sales but that doesn't mean it will. High initial demand may give way to low ongoing demand and few sales.

If demand wasn't high, all those eBay scalpers would lose out because they'd offer the product on eBay and find people are willing to wait. Same number of interested customers (100 in your example), same number of consoles will be sold, but they just don't want to buy one at the inflated price.

 

[Rangers]

Just happened upon some more PS4 stock (for Jan 18) on Amazon. 16 available (by the time I chanced upon it, no telling what the number started at) sold out in about a minute and a half...works out to only 320 an hour, but I'd hesitate to draw any conclusions from such a small sample.

It appears they keep getting in drips and drabs.

Xbox One has been sitting at 999+ available basically since the first of the year, so no way to measure (you can only measure sales when quantities available dip below 999). It's selling less than PS4's sporadic sellouts though, indicated by chart position (PS4 #1, XBO #11 currently)

 

[DieH@rd]

One MediaMarkt store in Holland got PS4s yesterday
https://twitter.com/MediaMarktCruq/status/421621265057988608

All gone 4.5hrs later
https://twitter.com/MediaMarktCruq/status/421689103005257728

 

[Xalion]

I'd say MS is supplying more AND there's slightly less demand due to price and the perception that PS4 is the more desirable console.

That's just my own interpretation of the situation.

I don't know that I can buy this. World wide, we know that Sony has sold 4.2 million consoles and is pretty much sold out. We know Microsoft has sold 3 million consoles and is not sold out. So if we say that MS is supplying more, we have to assume that world wide, MS has more than 1.2 million consoles unsold (that is the difference they have to make up just to reach Sony's sold number).

Plus we have no reason to believe that Sony's manufacturing capacity are lower than MS's or that Sony's allocations are much smaller. It just seems a stretch to try and make that argument.

if such arbitrary cut of sales point is used. I wasn't the one who got supply and demand mixed anyway. No one was saying that 4.2M in this time is not a good supply performance, even if someone expected such amount of demand to be there like Xalion did. He wasn't downplaying the supply side at all

I just wanted to echo that this is correct. Actually, the number of PS2s sold doesn't actually matter. Because consoles were extremely supply limited, I didn't bother to try and use first year of a single console when I was performing my estimate. Instead, I used the total amount sold in the last couple of generations with a slight adjustment on the Wii/PS3/XBox 360 generation to account for the fact that the PS2/XBox/Gamecube generation went until ~2011. I then roughly estimated the generation over generation increase to be about 33% because that fit with historic numbers. Given those numbers, I then estimated what I considered the "core" segment for each console to be to arrive at the number I thought would be sold before we transitioned into the larger population segment.

So I figured there would probably be ~5 million sold by each console before we saw meaningful extra supply. When I was doing this, my point wasn't to see what each console needed to "win" the console war. Rather, I was more interested in the "Consoles are dying" argument. I wanted to see what the numbers would need to be fore solid generation over generation growth - so this was a quick estimate.

That is why I haven't really bothered to participate in the argument. It was a rough estimate on my part, it isn't really all that time dependent, and I was just stating my opinion on where I thought things should be. I have my reasons for that opinion - but it is just an estimate.

 

[babybumb]

Man.. what on earth is going on at Amazon? How is PS4 top selling when its barely in stock and cant even preorder

Absolutely insane stuff here