This goes in line with what I expected. Sony Started production up in august and built around a half million units. September they made closer to 750,000. Every last one of those units got shipped to the US/Canada for november 15th but they came by boat so you'd have stuff arriving at sony's distribution by the end of october and then 2 weeks of units trickling out to store shelves. Europe might get the short end of the stick here a bit, I don't think Sony has ramped production up past 750K a month yet. So October for example, the first 500,000 systems built in china made their way to UK/Europe for the Nov.29th launch but the rest of the systems built ? well Gotta have some black Friday stock, as well as a few units to compete directly with MS.
Move along to December shipments and I think you'll have 300-400K shipped to north America and Europe. January will mirror December in terms of shipments and after that 1 of 2 things will happen, should the system still be selling out by the end of January , Sony will most likely attempt to start up another production to bring monthly production up to 1 million systems. The second option is that units manufactured in January and February will be stockpiled , north America and Europe get short shipped for 2-3 months. I'm talking 125,000 shipped consoles a piece for February and march. The reason being, Japanese launch is before the fiscal year end and Sony will try to have as close to a million units ready as possible.
Things get a bit simpler after march though, if the production remains the same you'll see 250K consoles shipped to Asia, Europe and North America for April through September. That first option of ramping production up early next year is very expensive and demand may not stay that high for all of 2014. So easing off shipments for a couple months to set up that Japanese launch is probably just easier.
Sony may activate that extra production line to produce 3 million systems that can ship by christmas 2014. These would be built from Sept. through Nov. Any units manufactured in December wouldn't make it to retail until January 2015 you see. The end result will be the following scenario -
End of 2014 outlook - 13.5 million produced, 12.5 million shipped
US roughly 4.8 million shipped
EU/UK 3.9 million shipped
Asia 3 million shipped
Now obviously , while the produced /shipped totals may stay the same the distribution WILL be based on demand. I feel strongly that each of those 3 major territories can sustain a minimum of 2 million sales at the current price and demand. This to me is like the best case scenario , if sales stay fairly consistent over the next 14 months and xbox under preforms as I expect it will this should all be achievable for sony. Even my lowball estimate is for 10 million produced and 9 million shipped and that scenario would see demand drop dramatically after the holidays to the point that sony produces just 500K a month for some of next yet. Or perhaps a part shortage/ natural disaster slows down production.
This is why I chuckled in another thread when another poster was insistent that the "PS4 won't be sold out until January". I'm thinking it will continue to be hard to find one until the end of March actually. By summer supply and demand will catch up though.
For those "waiting for a price drop" because 400$ for a brand new console is apparently too much money- bad news, they are priced perfectly for what the market is willing to pay and that won't change until sometime in 2015. Much like last gen price drops won't really come in the form of "now 50$ off" so much as adding more value to the 400$ box. On that note, I expect a 1 TB model will be available by next christmas for the same price and the remaining 500GB models will come with 3 months of PS+ and a game or perhaps even the camera tossed in there. The game in question will undoubtedly be knack
Come 2015 though, just for marketing reasons , Sony may well have a 349.99 model that comes with 500GB hard drive and nothing else.
Where does MS sit in this giant clusterfuck ? I believe they started production a month later then Sony did. I also think they didn't bother to have 3 production lines because their pre-order numbers weren't as high(going by anecdotal evidence and the handful of released figures, they seem to be 50-60% of what sony's demand is) and demand WILL be lower because of the high asking price.
To that end I feel Microsoft, especially if they don't have a price drop next year (they badly need one) will produce only 7 or 8 million consoles and ship 6-7 million of them total by the end of 2014. Demand will likely be just high enough to sell out for 3-4 months in North America but I don't even see a sell out situation occurring anywhere else. This will change slightly if they DO manage a price drop , they'd have to do one by April and it HAS to be 100$. In fact, I'd say a 399.99 Xbox One that comes with TitanFall is the only way they will be able to compete next spring/summer. This will eat into their profits and only push the new CEO further into the "sell off the gaming division" rhetoric. I don't think it will happen but there's a very real chance you won't have a microsoft gaming console in 5 years.
