Maybe he’s blown away because he’s read one of your posts where you claimed that barely anyone wants the Series S?
Nice try but I never actually said that. I've always said that Series S has regularly been underperforming relative to the purpose/intent of its design and release into the market at the time it was made available. It was meant to help bring in the mainstream and casual gamers who normally wait until the middle of the gen with price cuts to buy a new console, and get them to jump in early on.
Given that market intent, and considering where combined S/X sales are at, it's not doing that much in that goal department relative to what the typical person would expect. Series may be tracking ahead of XBO and 360, but not at the numbers you'd expect when one system was already placed at a mainstream, entry-level price point at launch and needed regular deals from the second half of this year to start moving more volume.
That is not the same thing as saying or even insinuating "barely anyone wants the Series S", so you must have me confused with someone else.
Ps5 has been in stock so much better this year. You have been able to buy them every time I've looked this year. Sure not every retailer has had them in 100 percent of the time but if you Google search you can find them in some place.
Supply was still massively lower than initial targets for the first half of the year. Supply only really started improving around some point in the start of Q3 (FY 2022 Q2 for Sony); here in America is when I noticed the supply was starting to finally improve around June/July period.
But basically, what you are saying is the series S is a genius little beast from MS because its allowed them to consistantly have stock and provide an option to buyers looking to purchase. ( even though no one buys them and they are just sat on shelves collecting dust, isn't that right Gaf?)
It depends on how you look at it. Sales for the S in the early half of the year weren't particularly strong; the months where Series won NPDs were due to Series X supply, not S, and we started seeing pricing deals, free game deals etc. for Series S around late July, which was...very weird, timing-wise. They may have improved sales from September onward, but at the expense of heavy subsidizations; if you knew where to look you could've picked up a Series S for $190 around the Black Friday period, and I saw several people talk about gift card stacking on top of that getting price down to $100.
Whether you see that as good or bad depends on how you look at it. Me? Well, for the person buying the system that's obviously a great deal. For a show of strength of Series S's value on the market, it's a bit of a bad sign because in order to move any serious volume, they seemingly need to time steep price cuts and deals around big holiday seasons and pushing the system into bargain bin pricing territory, which isn't that far removed from liquidation pricing. For a system that's only two years old, and considering the production costs on the system, it's a bit of a bad look.
Some people will try saying that the aggressively low pricing is a move to get more GamePass subs, but IMO that brings up a whole host of other potential problems that could be argue as examples of predatory pricing, which in itself could be viewed as an anti-competitive practice, but I'm not here to get into that topic.
The only thing i dont get about your comment is, what happens if people want sony exclusives....why would they pick up a series S? Somethings got to be inticing them?
???
Man unlucky, did you check all the usual spots? I picked up a ps5 yesterday from game with no game. Disk version in the middle of December with absolutely no issues for my father in law.
Edit: just checked and its still in stock
Ready for the next generation of gaming? Unlock new gaming experiences with the new PS5 console, here at GAME.
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I don't know how this narrative that you can't buy a ps5 still exists. They've even said they've got to a point where stocks so readily available they can ship more for Japan.
So in this post and another post later in the thread you're throwing up screenshots of PS5 systems being available to discount the narrative that PS5s aren't hard to find but...the post I made that you quoted didn't say anything about PS5s being impossible to find. I never even claimed something of the sort.
My statement simply said, it's not surprising that two systems with generally lesser demand than PS5 are in close distance sales-wise to it considering one of those two, Series S, had heavy price cuts and promo deals for the past couple of months (maybe even more than that in some European countries), and where Series S supply over the course of the entire year was much better than PS5's. One big Sony 1P exclusive coming in the 11th month wasn't going to suddenly push PS5 sales far and ahead of whatever combination Series X & S had managed over the year, considering the UK is traditionally one of Xbox's strongest markets.
I said demand for the S and X is lower than PS5s, and that's true. That's particularly true if we're talking about innate natural demand. There's also demand that can form out of a need or where a preferred product may not be available, but a customer is still in the market for something, then they'll limit their options to runner-ups and that will be a purchase based on a different type of demand. For a market like the UK I'd say if PS5 natural demand is a 100%, Series X natural demand is probably around an 85% - 90% and Series S natural demand is closer to a 60%.
So if a system like Series S is the only one regularly available over the course of a year, starts getting more and more aggressive pricing deals/promos/cuts/offers as the year goes on, and generally benefits from more people from last gen looking to jump into current-gen even with a second or third-choice console, then Series S demand may increase some in those instances, say to 75% - 80% and that can start to make up some differences especially if a system like PS5 is heavily supply-limited for at least half of the year.
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