It's safe to bet that Sony stockpiled units ready for the European launch though, so total PS4's = 1 million for NA + ? million for EU. And given general hardware sales, I think you'd be looking at about 1 million PS4s for Europe. 500k would be a little thin considering PS3 sold more in EU than NA, but there could be a larger push to secure NA market share.
Whatever the numbers though, Sony definitely has more units at launch than MS even if they haven't sold them yet. The fact both stand at a million apiece currently only holds for a week until PS4 launches elsewhere. Then all that other stock will be released (unless one believes that Sony has zero stockpiles in these countries and subsequent worldwide supply will be limited to monthly production runs, and Sony and MS will be selling 200k a month or whatever regardless of what territories).
It's hard to say, if they had a lot of stock there why wait until the 29th? I can understand stockpiling current manufacturing. But if that's the case then you are just diverting units that could be sold into a warehouse waiting for X day. Not much different than MS not stockpiling those same units and just selling whatever they are manufacturing.
If those units have been stockpiled since launch, again, I question why have a split worldwide launch?
I'd think it's more likely that they are just diverting X% of current manufacturing to have at least some stock for the rest of the world. But that doesn't at all say that their manufacturing volume is greater or worse than the competition. It just means they are selling less units in order to have stock for a separate part of the world. If that is the case, then their post launch sales will be a lot lower than you might expect as they divert manufacturing to fill stock for worldwide launch.
And stockpiling pre-NA launch units wouldn't have made any sense, either, IMO. As I said, if they did that, why not just launch worldwide in the first place.
MS could have done the same with having NA then the other 12 countries. They still would have sold through the same amount of units. But they'd sell fewer units between NA launch and worldwide launch as they stockpiled units. And when they finally launched in the rest of the 12 countries they'd still sell through the exact same amount of units as they would have sold through up until that point with a simultaneous world wide launch.
Traditionally you used to have staggered launches because you launch in another country when you expected supply to start being greater than demand, thus you'd end up with excess inventory. Launch in another territory at that point and you put yourself back into the situation where you want to be, demand greater than supply.
With this launch that doesn't exactly follow that model. Sony would still likely sell through 100% of PS4's even if it remained limited to NA through the holiday season.
So, I get that it allows them to have impressive "launch" numbers. But sell through between X launch and Y launch will suffer as units that could be sold are instead stockpiled for Y launch. As opposed to a traditional split launch where Y launch stockpile is formed from inventory that cannot be sold due to supply at that point being greater than demand due to launch windows being 6-12 months apart. So, for PS4, at the end of 1 month, they'll have sold through the exact same amount of units whether they had a split launch like PS4 or whether they launched in all countries they planned to launch in ala MS.
Regards,
SB
