Shipped versus Sold.

[bkilian]

Interesting factoid.

From Sony Financial Statements we find that they claim 47.9 million consoles shipped. From GDC today, they claim >41.6 million consoles sold.

Are they really saying they have 6 million consoles on shelves?

What does this imply when matched against their console forecast for this year? They will be a million short if they equal last year's 1st quarter shipment (and they have shipped less than last year in the last two quarters), and I don't see a lot of space for stuffing a channel already 6 million full.

Discuss.

 

[2real4tv]

Don't know how true this is but from GAF:

"They just reused the slides from the original NGP reveal which was before the fiscal release."

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=26269897&postcount=204

 

[corduroygt]

Interesting factoid.

From Sony Financial Statements we find that they claim 47.9 million consoles shipped. From GDC today, they claim >41.6 million consoles sold.

Are they really saying they have 6 million consoles on shelves?

What does this imply when matched against their console forecast for this year? They will be a million short if they equal last year's 1st quarter shipment (and they have shipped less than last year in the last two quarters), and I don't see a lot of space for stuffing a channel already 6 million full.

Discuss.

I think he's just using an outdated number, because that 41.6M number is exactly the same as reported in the Q2 financial statement from Sony.

 

[Scott_Arm]

The NGP was announced about a month ago, right? How many consoles could they have sold world wide in that time? 6.3 million is quite a big difference. To be honest, you could easily have several million consoles sitting on shelves world wide. How many millions, I don't know.

 

[DuckThor Evil]

The slide is missing last quarters numbers like was already mentioned. I don't really understand why they would use such an outdated number, but that is what is going on here anyway.

 

[bkilian]

Ok, that makes sense. I should have looked at the numbers a little more closely.

It seemed a little out of whack to have an entire quarter's shipments sitting on shelves.

 

[zed]

Its not the first time that sony have done this (use old shipment numbers) in marketing materials so its not without precedence

 

[dobwal]

Who cares?

I rather go by sales tracking number produced by independent third parties like NPD.

Sony been too spot on for the PS3 shipments, year in and year out, for my taste. They somehow lose this ability for all their other products, which I find weird.

Once you realize, Sony and others can be very deceptive with out actually lying in their reports, its easy to be distrustful.

You do know that Sony acts as a retailer for its own products with both its online site and its BMs. Meaning it can hold PS3s in its inventory technically accounted as shipped and no one would know the better unless they acknowledge it.

I for one have tried to find the numbers surrounding their business as an actual retailer to see whats what, but either I've done a poor job searching or that info is not readily discernable or available in Sony reports.

I am not claiming they do this but I wouldn't put it past them, MS or Nintendo.

 

[Rangers]

Interesting factoid.

From Sony Financial Statements we find that they claim 47.9 million consoles shipped. From GDC today, they claim >41.6 million consoles sold.

Are they really saying they have 6 million consoles on shelves?


Discuss.

I knew it! I knew it

Seriously though, Sony's sales do NOT seem to have matched up with their reported shipments for the last few quarters.

And to hit the forecast this FY, which I assume they will, they have to ship 2.8m this Q, which again seems really high based on sales.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

The NGP was announced about a month ago, right? How many consoles could they have sold world wide in that time? 6.3 million is quite a big difference. To be honest, you could easily have several million consoles sitting on shelves world wide. How many millions, I don't know.

I'm not sure about that. At a million PS3's a month, that'd be 6 months stock in advance. Are stores really wanting that much reserve capacity? Seems like a load of problems and every cretailer would rather have very limited stocks to accomodate price changes etc. The recent impounding of PS3 in the Netherlands says Sony ship 100k PS3's per week to the EU if I understand that right. So let's say 300k per week around the world seeing as the EU is Sony's top market, that'd be 1.2 million per month, which is about right. Also we're post Christmas, so unless retailers completely overbought, you'd expect stock to be generaly lower than higher.

I'd love some official insight into what stock capacity there is worldwide, but I don't see how it can be 6 million units unless retailers are a bit crap at sotck management!

 

[KKRT]

Interesting factoid.

From Sony Financial Statements we find that they claim 47.9 million consoles shipped. From GDC today, they claim >41.6 million consoles sold.

Are they really saying they have 6 million consoles on shelves?

What does this imply when matched against their console forecast for this year? They will be a million short if they equal last year's 1st quarter shipment (and they have shipped less than last year in the last two quarters), and I don't see a lot of space for stuffing a channel already 6 million full.

Discuss.

BTW Sony will never tell You how many units they sold to consumers, they just dont know. They track only shipped units, because depends of their distribution.

 

[Scott_Arm]

I'm not sure about that. At a million PS3's a month, that'd be 6 months stock in advance. Are stores really wanting that much reserve capacity? Seems like a load of problems and every cretailer would rather have very limited stocks to accomodate price changes etc. The recent impounding of PS3 in the Netherlands says Sony ship 100k PS3's per week to the EU if I understand that right. So let's say 300k per week around the world seeing as the EU is Sony's top market, that'd be 1.2 million per month, which is about right. Also we're post Christmas, so unless retailers completely overbought, you'd expect stock to be generaly lower than higher.

I'd love some official insight into what stock capacity there is worldwide, but I don't see how it can be 6 million units unless retailers are a bit crap at sotck management!

Yeah, I'm not saying it's six million sitting on shelves, but how many stores world-wide sell the PS3, and how many of them would have 1 or 2 units continually in stock? I'd guess that would be a pretty big number for PS3, 360, Wii or whatever. They sell the PS3 and the Wii at one of the big pharmacy chains in Canada, Shopper's Drug Mart. There are lots of places where one or two units could be sitting in stock.

 

[dobwal]

Yeah, I'm not saying it's six million sitting on shelves, but how many stores world-wide sell the PS3, and how many of them would have 1 or 2 units continually in stock? I'd guess that would be a pretty big number for PS3, 360, Wii or whatever. They sell the PS3 and the Wii at one of the big pharmacy chains in Canada, Shopper's Drug Mart. There are lots of places where one or two units could be sitting in stock.

Im sure retail inventory is very closely tied to monthly shipments. If Sony sells a million consoles a month then I guess retailers may provide enough retail space for less than twice that number. If you a retailer and you sell 50 PS3s a month, I doubt very much that you would be willing to provide retail shelf space beyond much more than that. All you need if enough stock to comfortably carry you to the next allotment with maybe enough extra stock to carry you through a short delay.

 

[AlphaWolf]

Im sure retail inventory is very closely tied to monthly shipments. If Sony sells a million consoles a month then I guess retailers may provide enough retail space for less than twice that number. If you a retailer and you sell 50 PS3s a month, I doubt very much that you would be willing to provide retail shelf space beyond much more than that. All you need if enough stock to comfortably carry you to the next allotment with maybe enough extra stock to carry you through a short delay.

It also depends very much on the retailer. Best Buy and the like will stock piles of consoles, Walmart does not (and not because they don't sell many, they just refuse to inventory products and are big enough they can force that burden elsewhere).

 

[Scott_Arm]

Im sure retail inventory is very closely tied to monthly shipments. If Sony sells a million consoles a month then I guess retailers may provide enough retail space for less than twice that number. If you a retailer and you sell 50 PS3s a month, I doubt very much that you would be willing to provide retail shelf space beyond much more than that. All you need if enough stock to comfortably carry you to the next allotment with maybe enough extra stock to carry you through a short delay.

There must be some number of consoles that is consistently taking up shelf space. It probably wouldn't be the same physical units, but it would be some small amount of overstock that is continually kept. The number wouldn't grow over time. It would just be some quantity kept in the back room waiting for the shelves to empty. I have no idea how many retail locations sell the PS3, Xbox, Wii, but I imagine the number is very very large. I don't think it would be unreasonably to assume a considerably percentage of those stores could be continually overstocked by one unit. Could that number add up to a million? I don't know. I just know that world-wide, there is no way every single retail outlet is selling out of every single console, every single quarter.

 

[NathansFortune]

I'd love some official insight into what stock capacity there is worldwide, but I don't see how it can be 6 million units unless retailers are a bit crap at sotck management!

The general rule is that you leave 3-4 weeks worth of supply on the market so that external shocks don't unravel your business. Take the EU import ban, Sony have around 3 weeks worth of PS3s available to send out to retailers in Europe already. I'm sure in the build up to Xmas retailers will want to get more stock in as they won't want to run out of a highly sought after item, but otherwise 3-4 weeks worth of supply is plenty.

 

[Ghostz]

Shipped Vs Sold?

Why does it matter?

It counts as revenue to Sony all the same.

Why must everything be a conspiracy? Oh noes "Sony are evilz for stuffing the channels to pad teh sales numbers". If this line of reasoning was even remotely true, they got a good Ponzi scheme going and their investors are blind, dumb and stupid to not notice it. Any amount of decent research would've found Sony out by now. There's no conspiracy here, really: it is, what it is.

 

[eastmen]

Well we know they wont be shipping any more to europe for a few days zing !

 

[Shifty Geezer]

The general rule is that you leave 3-4 weeks worth of supply on the market so that external shocks don't unravel your business. Take the EU import ban, Sony have around 3 weeks worth of PS3s available to send out to retailers in Europe already. I'm sure in the build up to Xmas retailers will want to get more stock in as they won't want to run out of a highly sought after item, but otherwise 3-4 weeks worth of supply is plenty.

That Sony's stocks though, right? What about the stcoks in Game, Gamestation, GameStop, the supermarkets and online retailers, etc.? It's an issue of buffer sizes. We have an in-flow of 100k a week or whatever. We have one buffer at Sony's warehouses of 3-4 weeks worth of stock. We don't know how much buffer capacity there is in stores. One million BnM stores each with 3 consoles in stock is 3 million units. Or is it more like 100,000 stores, and a few hundred thousands units in local storage?

Well we know they wont be shipping any more to europe for a few days zing !

There are legitimate workarounds. The injunction is in the Netherlands. If Sony change shipments to another port, they can still deliver. As KongRudi said in the injunction thread, the patent issues are complete crap, claiming violation of nonsense patents filed after PS3's existence. This just sounds like LG being a nuisance and there being no long-term prospect of PS3's getting canned in Europe.

 

[eastmen]

Shifty , I was just joking about it hence the Zing at the end