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[Dalthien]

That's not exactly true. When you report inventory, you report retail "cost" not manufacturing cost, that is the cost you charge the retailers. I think we're all quite aware that hardware margin is non-existant. And you are also aware that the PSP is being sold at ~$199/$249 vs $129 for the PS2, so less PSP HW accounts for more cost than more PS2 HW. And last year, there was little to NO PSP HW last year in inventory all of it was sent to the US for US launch last March.

And Sony's inventory also includes all of their software that is sold and the manufacturing/royalty component of 3rd parties software as well as accessories, not just hardware.

I'm not sure about overseas accounting policies, but a requirement of GAAP in the United States is that inventory be recorded at the lower of either the cost to produce it, the cost to repurchase it or the market value of the inventory. In the case of the PSP, this means that Sony's inventory value is based upon either the direct cost, or the wholesale price to retailers, whichever is lower. I recall Sony making a comment a while ago that they had begun making a small profit on each unit sold, so I'm assuming that the direct cost to Sony is less than the wholesale retail price. But I agree with you that at this point the difference is still probably fairly small.

I didn't specifically comment on the actual quantity of PSP units in inventory, because I don't know what the breakdowns would be for Sony's warehouses. I'm assuming at this point, that Sony probably has a pretty good grip on PS2 production and sales, so I would expect that Sony's inventory would be made up of more PSP units than PS2 units just because Sony hasn't had a chance yet to stabilize their PSP production vs. sales, whereas they have had more than 5 years to do that with their PS2 supplies.

Based upon this line from their financial statement:

"Inventory, as of June 30, 2006, was Y122.0 billion ($1,061 million), which represents a Y37.9 billion, or 45.1%, increase compared with the level as of June 30, 2005. This increase was primarily a result of the worldwide full-scale deployment of the PSP platform. Inventory, as of June 30, 2006, was a Y10.5 billion, or 9.4%, increase compared with the level as of March 31, 2006."

This says that their inventory supplies were at $730 million at June/05, and $1.06 billion at June/06, and that the primary reason for such a large increase in inventory build-up was the PSP. That is an increase of $330 million in inventory in just a year. If the PSP hardware is responsible for 2/3 of that increase, at a cost of $185 per unit (rough guess on my part), then that is a 1.2 million unit increase in PSP inventory from June/05 to June/06. I am just pointing out that Sony is sitting on a significant number of units in their warehouses that haven't even been purchased by the retail sector yet. And these units are all counted in their shipment totals.

Finally, and I'm surprised that abolutely none of you have publically deduced this; Sony's numbers do, in fact, include defective units. Imagine the PS2 had a 2.5% defective ratio. That would be 2.5M PS2's that are in the production numbers that cannot be considered sales.

It's funny that you mentioned this. I did actually bring this point up (in an argument with ioi actually) in a previous thread. I'm too lazy to try to dig it up right now, and I have no idea what the actual rate of returned units is, but yeah - defective units are also included in Sony's shipment totals. Along with units in Sony warehouses, in transit, and in the retail sector.

 

[Lapsed]

There's no doubt that US is #1, Western Europe is #2, and Japan is #3, but the rest of the world do provide substantial volume when you put them all toghether. How much? I have no idea. I'm not aware of any tracking services for most of those regions and I also don't know how the other HW manufacturs worldwide distribution is setup.

How can you say it is 'substantial' when you have no idea of its size?

Why stop at 'substantial'? Since there is no available data, we can say it is anything. Why not 'monstrous'? Why not '"OMG, those South African sales are 'w00t' quality!"?

I think it is ridiculous to say you cannot add up the major game markets (which we do have data on) and call it 'worldwide sales' because there is no data on the tiniest of markets like El Salvador and Guatemala.

If there is no data, then it cannot be included in the tally. We cannot imagine data and label it 'substantial'. And missing data doesn't invalidate a worldwide sales count. What invalidates a worldwide sales count is imaginary data which you seem to be suggesting.

 

[sonycowboy]

How can you say it is 'substantial' when you have no idea of its size?

Why stop at 'substantial'? Since there is no available data, we can say it is anything. Why not 'monstrous'? Why not '"OMG, those South African sales are 'w00t' quality!"?

I think it is ridiculous to say you cannot add up the major game markets (which we do have data on) and call it 'worldwide sales' because there is no data on the tiniest of markets like El Salvador and Guatemala.

When SCEE, essentially tied with NA as the largest region says that 45% of their revenue comes from outside of western Europe, I'd have to call that substantial. In addition, Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong are famous for their piracy, of software, but they do buy some hardware.

If there is no data, then it cannot be included in the tally. We cannot imagine data and label it 'substantial'. And missing data doesn't invalidate a worldwide sales count. What invalidates a worldwide sales count is imaginary data which you seem to be suggesting.

I'm not trying to determine the worldwide data. I absolutely admit that I don't know the non-tracked regions for any systems, including the DS & PSP. However, to pretend that they're zero as many have done to say that the PSP has 5.5M units of outstanding inventory IS NOT INVALIDATING the worldwide sales??

Not only that, but absolutely everybody that comes up with these numbers will confess that they have absolutely no idea what European, Canadian, Australian, Korean,etc,etc sales are.

We have US & Japan (which are estimates. good estimates, but estimates) and we lucked into Germany thanks to Liepzig. Other than that we're mostly blind except a few incomplete numbers we get every now and then.

As I've said before, I have no doubt that the DS is killing the PSP in every region at this point. It's been relatively recent for the western regions that the DS has substantially passed the PSP on a weekly/monthly basis, but boy has it.

But, you can't add the 4 numbers you know, rely on Nintendo PR for the rest and then try and figure out everything else. It doens't work. Not unless you actually have the numbers, which it's pretty clear nobody on this board has.

Are their unsold PSP's out there. Absolutely. 1M? Sure. 2M? Maybe. 5.5M? No. Exactly how many? Only Sony knows.

 

[chadums90]

I guess it highly depends what "Western Europe" means. Everything east of France and the UK normally is not considered to be Western Europe.

Uh...since when are countries like Germany, Switzerland and Italy NOT part of Western Europe?

 

[Deku]

Are their unsold PSP's out there. Absolutely. 1M? Sure. 2M? Maybe. 5.5M? No. Exactly how many? Only Sony knows.

You're basically arguing in favour of a phanton market about as large as the PSP market is for Japan. Even if we grant you that, we also have software data which doesn't paint a pretty picture as it is. What you're suggesting makes things look even worse.

And the flaw in your logic of course is that you're basically saying everything for Nintendo is accoutned for, but you want to be more lax on Sony's numbers, so you're going to take their fuzzy sales data and give them the benefit of the doubt by assuming all these extra unreported sales in 3rd world economies to explain away discrpeancies between their shipped figures and tracked sales data.

You do understand if we follow your same logic, the DS could be argued to have an equally large phantom market in Guatemala and Taiwan. It makes absolutely no sense. We have people here on GAF keeping track of sales data and they largely agree with what Nintendo has said their WW sales are. But somehow you want to apply a double standard and give the PSP all these extra markets.

Following Occam's razor , I think its more plausible that there's 5-6 million usold PSPs sitting in warehouses, on shelves somewhere than a platform specific discrepanciy between GAF numbers and actual PSP sell through, which you've argued entirely on assumptions which we don't have to make otherwise.

 

[Square2005]

When SCEE, essentially tied with NA as the largest region says that 45% of their revenue comes from outside of western Europe, I'd have to call that substantial. In addition, Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong are famous for their piracy, of software, but they do buy some hardware.



I'm not trying to determine the worldwide data. I absolutely admit that I don't know the non-tracked regions for any systems, including the DS & PSP. However, to pretend that they're zero as many have done to say that the PSP has 5.5M units of outstanding inventory IS NOT INVALIDATING the worldwide sales??

Not only that, but absolutely everybody that comes up with these numbers will confess that they have absolutely no idea what European, Canadian, Australian, Korean,etc,etc sales are.

We have US & Japan (which are estimates. good estimates, but estimates) and we lucked into Germany thanks to Liepzig. Other than that we're mostly blind except a few incomplete numbers we get every now and then.

As I've said before, I have no doubt that the DS is killing the PSP in every region at this point. It's been relatively recent for the western regions that the DS has substantially passed the PSP on a weekly/monthly basis, but boy has it.

But, you can't add the 4 numbers you know, rely on Nintendo PR for the rest and then try and figure out everything else. It doens't work. Not unless you actually have the numbers, which it's pretty clear nobody on this board has.

Are their unsold PSP's out there. Absolutely. 1M? Sure. 2M? Maybe. 5.5M? No. Exactly how many? Only Sony knows.

sc, we know at PSP launch (March 05) that 31,500 were sold in Canada from the Canadian NPD so just add 5.1% to the U.S. NPD PSP sales to get NA. Shouldn't that be good enough for America? Even tho NPD may low by 1-5%, at least we know that many were sold and it should be good enough to make comparisons b/w official shipment data. If more are shipped they may be defects as you suggested & exchanged for another w/ch I assume the NPD doesn't track. Knowing Sony the defective % of their consoles produced may be quite high.

Look at PSX:
30.14m sold in U.S. (NPD) while: 40.78m shipped to NA. Using the PSP no. we can add ~5% to U.S. to get 31.65m <that may be the best we can do w/o unreasonably scaling-up, as ioi does, to fit the official shipments (w/ch we'd hav to add 35%).
Knowing Sony's products those are probably mostly defective units, Yes 9m of 'em! So about 22% of PSXs produced for America may hav been defective. Seems high but it was quite common back then to hav to buy two PSXs. I'm sure many gaffers would back me up on this. So I'm assuming the same for the high PS2 shipment numbers & the PSP. Makes the most sense to me b/c the NPD is very accurate w/ NIntendo & Microsoft so why would they leave out 22% of the American market for Sony?

 

[Fuzzy]

There's absolutely no doubt that the DS is killing the PSP in sales, but anyone that honestly believes that close to 6M PSP's are floating out there in warehouses and store shelves (33% of the entire LTD production) is kidding themselves.

Isn't that about the percentage you thought for the Xbox 360 that was shipped but not sold?

 

[max-pain]

http://www.scee.presscentre.com/Content/Detail.asp?ReleaseID=4257&NewsAreaID=2

22/08/2006

...
PSP is now in the hands of more than 4.5 million consumers throughout Europe.
...

 

[Lapsed]

When SCEE, essentially tied with NA as the largest region says that 45% of their revenue comes from outside of western Europe, I'd have to call that substantial. In addition, Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong are famous for their piracy, of software, but they do buy some hardware.

One of the problems of the Internet is that tone can be misunderstood. I hope I didn't come across as 'hostile' as that surely wasn't my intent. I was just so *boggled* when you said sales were substancial but had no idea what those sales were. Any other GAFer I'd ignore but we have high standards in you.

Thanks for the reply. SCEE saying that 45% of their revenue comes from outside Western Europe was a reference of what I was looking for when you said 'substantial'.

Any idea on which countries these 45% sales are mostly going to? I have heard that Eastern Europe is rapidly growing richer.

However, to pretend that they're zero as many have done to say that the PSP has 5.5M units of outstanding inventory IS NOT INVALIDATING the worldwide sales??

Earlier, it sounded like you were annoyed that anyone would try to piece together all the sales. But it appears your real complaint is comparing the shipments (which we essentially know) to the sales (which we do not know in some areas). Comparing European shipments to European regions cannot be fully done since we lack sales data for Eastern Europe. I understand where you are coming from now.

But, you can't add the 4 numbers you know, rely on Nintendo PR for the rest and then try and figure out everything else. It doens't work. Not unless you actually have the numbers, which it's pretty clear nobody on this board has.

I agree with you fully about not relying on Nintendo PR. With the launch of the Wii and PS3, Wall Street will be studying the "console race" with an eager eye (they seemed to ignore the PSP vs. DS). We should be cynical about all the console company's PR statements. I suspect the launches this fall and 2007 are going to be extremely nasty in misinformation with the PR war. Every console company will declare themselves the 'winner'.

Despite the lack of *all* data, I still think GAF should go ahead and do all we can to gather data. I think we're at the 'calm before the storm' before the huge PR battles erupt this fall and throughout 2007 between the console companies. We need something to keep us grounded from the PR insanity that is soon to come.

 

[Flo_Evans]

sony always builds up a large inventory of consoles for xmas over the summer. I don't see what is so hard to understand about it or that it indicates a problem. Nintendo seems to always 'build to order' which leads to shortages but a very close shipped/sold ratio.

I would also imagine some of the PSP plants are going to be converted to PS3 plants once they are confident they have enough PSPs to keep it in stock thru xmas. I have no info to back this up whatsoever! but that is what I would do if I were sony.

 

[Neo_Dasus]

I'm going to skip all of this text and just get to the point, which do YOU prefer?

 

[sonycowboy]

You're basically arguing in favour of a phanton market about as large as the PSP market is for Japan. Even if we grant you that, we also have software data which doesn't paint a pretty picture as it is. What you're suggesting makes things look even worse.

And the flaw in your logic of course is that you're basically saying everything for Nintendo is accoutned for, but you want to be more lax on Sony's numbers, so you're going to take their fuzzy sales data and give them the benefit of the doubt by assuming all these extra unreported sales in 3rd world economies to explain away discrpeancies between their shipped figures and tracked sales data.

You do understand if we follow your same logic, the DS could be argued to have an equally large phantom market in Guatemala and Taiwan. It makes absolutely no sense. We have people here on GAF keeping track of sales data and they largely agree with what Nintendo has said their WW sales are. But somehow you want to apply a double standard and give the PSP all these extra markets.

Following Occam's razor , I think its more plausible that there's 5-6 million usold PSPs sitting in warehouses, on shelves somewhere than a platform specific discrepanciy between GAF numbers and actual PSP sell through, which you've argued entirely on assumptions which we don't have to make otherwise.

Actually, I'm not making any sort of commentary about a phantom market. The market exists. And I have no idea what size it is. And I'm not trying to explain away the discrepancies. The discrepancies exist because Sony gives shipments and Nintendo gives sales. If we were to get DS' shipments, we'd likely be able to add several million units.

I absolutely agree that these regions CANNOT explain the complete discrepancy. I am only contesting the number of PSP's folks think are sitting in warehouses. You cannot come up with ANY reasonable number for this, because we don't know the status of business in these other areas or what the defective rate has been.

I don't doubt that it's wayy in the millions.

 

[Roders5]

I'm going to skip all of this text and just get to the point, which do YOU prefer?

Cheryl Tweedy

Spoiler

Cole

 

[Frankfurter]

Uh...since when are countries like Germany, Switzerland and Italy NOT part of Western Europe?

"Germany is located in Central Europe..."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Germany#Geography

(if you click on Central Europe you'll also get to see a map of Europe which tries to clarifiy the only vaguely defined boarders of Western, Central etc. Europe)

When SCEE, essentially tied with NA as the largest region says that 45% of their revenue comes from outside of western Europe, I'd have to call that substantial.

Germany: ~15%
Italy: ~10%
Nordic Countries: ~10%
Everything else (Austria, Switzerland, Eastern Europe countries, Denmark + Swaziland and all these huge markets): ~10%

 

[heidern]

PSP is now in the hands of more than 4.5 million consumers throughout Europe.

Well, if the 2.44M by around February is correct, then that means over 2M psps sold in the 6-7 months since then. Or around 300,000 a month/75,000 a week, almost double what they are doing in the US. That would be pretty ****ing awseome, although it makes you wonder why any psp games haven't lit up the charts in a quite a while.

Germany: ~15%
Italy: ~10%
Nordic Countries: ~10%
Everything else (Austria, Switzerland, Eastern Europe countries, Denmark + Swaziland and all these huge markets): ~10%

Ok, that makes sense. The statement that 45% comes from outside western Europe was made at Leipzig in Germany. It was done to big up the German market rather than western Europe = UK, France, Germany etc and Eastern Europe = Bulgaria etc. In other words that 45% figure includes many countries that are covered by GFK and so on. That would mean the phantom market is just that, and probably accounts for only a few percent of the whole European market.

That does suggest 1.5-2M psps shipped to Europe but not sold. Perhaps 1.3 million in stores, 500K in warehouses and 200K in on boats and other points of transit? (I really got no idea about what is possible for these to hold)

 

[ichigo kurosaki]

Well, if the 2.44M by around February is correct, then that means over 2M psps sold in the 6-7 months since then. Or around 300,000 a month/75,000 a week, almost double what they are doing in the US. That would be pretty ****ing awseome, although it makes you wonder why any psp games haven't lit up the charts in a quite a while.



Ok, that makes sense. The statement that 45% comes from outside western Europe was made at Leipzig in Germany. It was done to big up the German market rather than western Europe = UK, France, Germany etc and Eastern Europe = Bulgaria etc. In other words that 45% figure includes many countries that are covered by GFK and so on. That would mean the phantom market is just that, and probably accounts for only a few percent of the whole European market.

That does suggest 1.5-2M psps shipped to Europe but not sold. Perhaps 1.3 million in stores, 500K in warehouses and 200K in on boats and other points of transit? (I really got no idea about what is possible for these to hold)

Greography aside, normally "Western Europe" is used to refer to the more important European markets: UK, Germany, Spain, France, Italy, Nordic countries, Switzerland and so on. I think it's more a matter of stressing the difference between the richer (located in the west, i.e. "Western Europe") and poorer countries in Europe (i.e. those in the east, "Eastern Europe") -for data compilation, statistics and stuff- than a matter of location.

 

[jarrod]

Are their unsold PSP's out there. Absolutely. 1M? Sure. 2M? Maybe. 5.5M? No. Exactly how many? Only Sony knows.

How can you be sure about the 5.5m figure though, as that'd already makes a (fully transparent) attempt to account for unknown markets? Is your argument that these unkown markets actually account for more than what ioi/S2005/etc are attributing? If so, how could you come to that conclusion exactly?

What would you estimate the amount of PSPs "not in consumer hands" of that 19 million figure to come to? 3 million? 5 million? You seem rather firm on 5.5 million being an impossibility... how about 5.49 million?

 

[Frankfurter]

Greography aside, normally "Western Europe" is used to refer to the more important European markets: UK, Germany, Spain, France, Italy, Nordic countries, Switzerland and so on. I think it's more a matter of stressing the difference between the richer (located in the west, i.e. "Western Europe") and poorer countries in Europe (i.e. those in the east, "Eastern Europe") -for data compilation, statistics and stuff- than a matter of location.

Europe simply isn't divided into Western and Eastern Europe anymore since the end of the Cold War. If you wanna talk about the richer and poorer countries you still can use for example the EU-15. It may be more or less common to talk about "Western Europe" if you mean the richer countries, but it's just an incorrect term and I'm therefore pretty sure that no multi billion dollar company would use Western Europe as a term but mean the "richer" countries in Europe (whereever the boarder between rich and poor may be).

 

[sonycowboy]

How can you be sure about the 5.5m figure though, as that'd already makes a (fully transparent) attempt to account for unknown markets? Is your argument that these unkown markets actually account for more than what ioi/S2005/etc are attributing? If so, how could you come to that conclusion exactly?

What would you estimate the amount of PSPs "not in consumer hands" of that 19 million figure to come to? 3 million? 5 million? You seem rather firm on 5.5 million being an impossibility... how about 5.49 million?

I haven't totally followed Square or Brosh's estimates for Europe, but from everything I've seen, they seem to be tracking Western Europe's (Charttrack & GFk's numbers) using past percentages and rumored sales tidbits from certain countries to extrapolate the result. Square admitted that he didn't take anything else into account, although I'm not sure about Brosh.

Again, I have no idea what the volume of the extra regions amount to. It could easily be < 500k, or it could be a good bit more. I don't know. But I'm also not trying to come up with "guesstimates" and then mock the results. I tend to only deal with the numbers I actually know, especially when trying to compare manufactured to sold

Up until the 45% of SCEE's revenue outside of the euro countries was stated, I assumed that they were minimal. And, in the overall scope, they likely are (SCEE is reponsible for Australia & NZ as well), and I'd also bet that the PS2 as a budget system probably accounts for a larger percentage of that revenue as it's a more diverified and mature business.

For those that wonder how this might affect Microsoft's number (as Fuzzy did), Microsoft has had a much more staged launch throughout this year and more to come, with the original Xbox never launched in many of the areas. The 360 has not yet been launched into Eastern Europe, Middle East & Africa yet and is only in 16 PAL countries to date (India & Brazil will be launched this year as well)

http://www.gameinfowire.com/news.asp?nid=9253

Europe simply isn't divided into Western and Eastern Europe anymore since the end of the Cold War. If you wanna talk about the richer and poorer countries you still can use for example the EU-15. It may be more or less common to talk about "Western Europe" if you mean the richer countries, but it's just an incorrect term and I'm therefore pretty sure that no multi billion dollar company would use Western Europe as a term but mean the "richer" countries in Europe (whereever the boarder between rich and poor may be).

Western Europe has traditionally been used by this industry to refer to the countries that have a "western influence", which is for the standard countries that we think of, plus the nordic countries. It traditionally does not refer (but is controlled by the European branches of the industry) to certain Slavic countries, Middle East, Africa, Turkey. The included regions are also defined as the "European Union" regions.

 

[Frankfurter]

Western Europe has traditionally been used by this industry to refer to the countries that have a "western influence", which is for the standard countries that we think of, plus the nordic countries. It traditionally does not refer (but is controlled by the European branches of the industry) to certain Slavic countries, Middle East, Africa, Turkey. The included regions are also defined as the "European Union" regions.

I don't know where these traditions come from, but it sounds a bit strange that - for example - the baltic countries should be counted as a part of Western Europe.

 

[LiveFromKyoto]

Following Occam's razor , I think its more plausible that there's 5-6 million usold PSPs sitting in warehouses, on shelves somewhere than a platform specific discrepanciy between GAF numbers and actual PSP sell through, which you've argued entirely on assumptions which we don't have to make otherwise.

Following Occam's razor you're going to say that a company which borrows money to manufacture hardware hasn't sold a single unit it's made in all of 2006, yet continues to pump out at breakneck speed a product which is only selling 66% of what's being put out there, and without a single real price drop!?

Following Occam's razor I'm going to guess that all the guys in this thread with Zelda names and Wii avatars keep pounding on this very unlikely state of affairs due to some kind of agenda which I can't put my finger on.

 

[Square2005]

http://www.scee.presscentre.com/Content/Detail.asp?ReleaseID=4257&NewsAreaID=2 - PSP is now in the hands of more than 4.5 million consumers throughout Europe.

sc, can we believe this? Is this just Europe or all of PAL territories? If it's true for PAL then 83% of PAL shipments hav sold as of July (New PAL shipment data up thru July: 6.65m).

Do we know exactly what countries are covered in the 2.44m sold thru January claim? Probably only Western Europe. So maybe we can add 45% for the rest of PAL, as sc keeps mentioning.

 

[LiveFromKyoto]

I don't know where these traditions come from, but it sounds a bit strange that - for example - the baltic countries should be counted as a part of Western Europe.

I've never heard of baltic or slavic countries being included in western Europe, but Germany, die Schweiz, the nordic countries, Italy, Greece etc. always have been. France was never a dividing line. Turkey has always been the orient throughout history, as far as I'm aware. The only time any part of Germany may have been included in a definition of eastern Europe was the DDR.

 

[jarrod]

Again, I have no idea what the volume of the extra regions amount to. It could easily be < 500k, or it could be a good bit more. I don't know. But I'm also not trying to come up with "guesstimates" and then mock the results. I tend to only deal with the numbers I actually know, especially when trying to compare manufactured to sold

Up until the 45% of SCEE's revenue outside of the euro countries was stated, I assumed that they were minimal. And, in the overall scope, they likely are (SCEE is reponsible for Australia & NZ as well), and I'd also bet that the PS2 as a budget system probably accounts for a larger percentage of that revenue as it's a more diverified and mature business.

Given all that though... how can you be so firm on 5.5m figure being an outright impossibility? Would an extra 500k for the Slavic/Baltic/MidEast regions even be likely considering the later launches and (as you admit) 45% figure likely reflects more a bugeted PS2 than new, high end PSP... plus some regions (AS/NZ) already being accounted?

I'm not asking for "guesstimates" per se, I'm just asking how you can with any certainty rule out ~5.5 million manufactured PSPs not being in consumer hands? There seems to be a basic hole in your logic here (ie: no one can in any way properly account for these unknown regions, yet PSP certainly can't be 5.5m in channel thanks to these regions) and it invariably favors one position.

 

[jarrod]

Following Occam's razor I'm going to guess that all the guys in this thread with Zelda names and Wii avatars keep pounding on this very unlikely state of affairs due to some kind of agenda which I can't put my finger on.

If you're going to start pushing "agenda" here, all sides become equally transparent. Except maybe Square2005.

Plus, I don't fit either of your criteria. Neener.

 

[LiveFromKyoto]

If you're going to start pushing "agenda" here, all sides become equally transparent. Except maybe Square2005.

Plus, I don't fit either of your criteria. Neener.

Well, turning this around here, why do you think Sony would keep manufacturing at that pace with no demand to meet it? Wishful thinking? Hoping Loco Roco would spike sales by 30%?

If the disparity were truly that huge, wouldn't they be forced to drop the price to stimulate demand? Because otherwise, why would retailers buy any more systems, if they hadn't even sold the ones they bought by the beginning of 2006 at the latest? If these numbers were correct retailer purchases would have flatlined, but since that obviously isn't the case, the gigantic disparity just can't be true. At the very least, retailers would have begun discounting PSPs themselves to clear inventory.

Sony's borrowing money. Sony's about to eat a whole lot of pain on the PS3 launch. If the -$200 per unit rumour is true, multiply that across across the 2-4 million PS3s shipped by the end of 2006. Then explain to me how Sony shareholders would let them get away with manufacturing millions more PSPs than anybody's actually buying.

Unless Sony and their shareholders have simultaneously gone flat-out retarded, the shipped/sold gap has to be narrower than what's being said here.

 

[Frankfurter]

I've never heard of baltic or slavic countries being included in western Europe, but Germany, die Schweiz, the nordic countries, Italy, Greece etc. always have been. France was never a dividing line. Turkey has always been the orient throughout history, as far as I'm aware. The only time any part of Germany may have been included in a definition of eastern Europe was the DDR.

The point is there is not only Western and Eastern Europe.

 

[jarrod]

Well, turning this around here, why do you think Sony would keep manufacturing at that pace with no demand to meet it? Wishful thinking? Hoping Loco Roco would spike sales by 30%?

If the disparity were truly that huge, wouldn't they be forced to drop the price to stimulate demand? Because otherwise, why would retailers buy any more systems, if they hadn't even sold the ones they bought by the beginning of 2006 at the latest? If these numbers were correct retailer purchases would have flatlined, but since that obviously isn't the case, the gigantic disparity just can't be true. At the very least, retailers would have begun discounting PSPs themselves to clear inventory.

Sony's borrowing money. Sony's about to eat a whole lot of pain on the PS3 launch. If the -$200 per unit rumour is true, multiply that across across the 2-4 million PS3s shipped by the end of 2006. Then explain to me how Sony shareholders would let them get away with manufacturing millions more PSPs than anybody's actually buying.

Unless Sony and their shareholders have simultaneously gone flat-out retarded, the shipped/sold gap has to be narrower than what's being said here.

Well, there's always the possibility of Sony strong arming retail (it's happened before, see Killzone). Or retail could be generally over-ordering, thinking PSP to be a "no-brainer" seller and dedicating copius shelf estate (it's happened before, see UMD Video). Or SCEI could have an extraordinary amount in storage, having dedicated significant manufacturing lines to the hardware, making storage the financially more viable solution versus an immediate factory shutdown/changeover (it's not like those units won't sell eventually anyway). There's plenty of reasons which could add to Sony arriving at 33% of production unsold, that don't equate to anyone being "flat-out retarded".

Saying PSP must've sold more than the picture tracking outlets allude to, thanks to *production shipment* figures and regions like Dubai though... that seems a bit closer to "flat-out retarded".

 

[sonycowboy]

Given all that though... how can you be so firm on 5.5m figure being an outright impossibility? Would an extra 500k for the Slavic/Baltic/MidEast regions even be likely considering the later launches and (as you admit) 45% figure likely reflects more a bugeted PS2 than new, high end PSP... plus some regions (AS/NZ) already being accounted?

I'm not asking for "guesstimates" per se, I'm just asking how you can with any certainty rule out ~5.5 million manufactured PSPs not being in consumer hands? There seems to be a basic hole in your logic here (ie: no one can in any way properly account for these unknown regions, yet PSP certainly can't be 5.5m in channel thanks to these regions) and it invariably favors one position.

PSP wasn't a later launch. It launched in all PAL regions Sept 1st.

I can rule out 5.5M PSP's being unsold by a couple of things. Known Western European sales + NPD + Media Create + Australia/NZ + Korea have all had some numbers released and ever since the European launch the comparisons have been completely fuxxored.

The second reason is that Sony is not stupid and retailers aren't stupid along with them. Why would ANYONE believe that Sony is month after month continously manufacturing PSP's when they haven't even come close to selling the shipments they made back before December of last year. Hell, they made another 1M units between June 30th and July 24th of this year.

Unless you guys honestly believe that Sony is on some deranged bent to destroy their company by having billions of $$$'s of unsold PSP's out there, at an increasing rate nontheless, just from a purely reasonable standpoint, you CANNOT believe that Sony would be that stupid.

Also, my reason for doubting 5.5 is not merely unaccounted for sales. It also accounts for defectives, which if we assumed say 2% of PSP's were defective/returned that would be 400k units.

Well, there's always the possibility of Sony strong arming retail (it's happened before, see Killzone). Or retail could be generally over-ordering, thinking PSP to be a "no-brainer" seller and dedicating copius shelf estate (it's happened before, see UMD Video). Or SCEI could have an extraordinary amount in storage, having dedicated significant manufacturing lines to the hardware, making storage the financially more viable solution versus an immediate factory shutdown/changeover (it's not like those units won't sell eventually anyway). There's plenty of reasons which could add to Sony arriving at 33% of production unsold, that don't equate to anyone being "flat-out retarded".

I just finished posting this and you make this ridiculous argument. :lol

Sony "strong arming" retail? Retail likes to have millions of units of unsold inventory for 6-9 months ahead? Sony's building super warehouses to hold millions of units?

I literally can't believe you typed that and it's even sadder that you consider it to be possible.

 

[Deku]

Actually, I'm not making any sort of commentary about a phantom market. The market exists. And I have no idea what size it is. And I'm not trying to explain away the discrepancies. The discrepancies exist because Sony gives shipments and Nintendo gives sales. If we were to get DS' shipments, we'd likely be able to add several million units.

What's your proof and why does it only apply to Sony? The numbers for these market could have easily been accounted for in the regional sales data Sony themselves announce albeit there are shipped figures. It's already been suggested that it could explain where some of the shipments went.

I absolutely agree that these regions CANNOT explain the complete discrepancy. I am only contesting the number of PSP's folks think are sitting in warehouses. You cannot come up with ANY reasonable number for this, because we don't know the status of business in these other areas or what the defective rate has been.

I don't doubt that it's wayy in the millions.

It's not REASONABLE. Your theory requires a 'special' case application which gives Sony extra numbers based on 'phantom' markets which you don't count for other manufacturers. I've already said this. If we assume you're right, we'd have to seriously consider revising hardware numbers for every console released upwards significantly, including the NDS. The only problem with that is GAF numbers are remarkably accurate and we are usually on the ballpark for other manufactuers. For example, GAF was showing 20 m sold for DS before Nintendo made it official. NOA (probably included Canada and the smaller South American markets) revised the WW number in their PR to 21 m sold.

At $120 cost of goods (very generous number) and assuming a high end of 6 m units in the inventory channel, that's about $720 million in inventory split between Sony and various retailers worldwide. It's not an extraordinary sum. And its far more plausible than ONLY Sony's PSP numbers being undercounted.


Perhaps the concept behind Occum's razor allude you and the couple of other posters here who think its makes perfect sense to attritube extra sales only to Sony because you can't stomach the fact that Sony may in fact have 5-6 m units unsold.

 

[AdmiralViscen]

I don't know what's going on in this topic, but Germany is not considered Western Europe.

 

[Roders5]

I don't know what's going on in this topic, but Germany is not considered Western Europe.

Yes it is. Just type in 'western europe countries' into google, nearly all the links on the first page say it is. I live in europe and I always would have thought the same.

 

[sonycowboy]

What's your proof and why does it only apply to Sony? The numbers for these market could have easily been accounted for in the regional sales data Sony themselves announce albeit there are shipped figures. It's already been suggested that it could explain where some of the shipments went.

Who said it only applies to Sony? Do you know when the DS was launched in the other regions or what those sales are? The difference between Sony's reporting and Nintendo's is that Nintendo says their numbers are sales, and they are unquestioned by anybody here. They've built that trust. But do you know which countries constitute the sales by percentage?

It's not like anybody here has the tracking sales for Europe to be able to align them with Nintendo's numbers. In fact, they don't seem to try. It's assumed that they are right.

You can keep saying "phantom markets'" until you're blue in the face, but it doesn't make the fact go away. Sony launched the PSP is almost 100 regions in Sept of last year and yet we have ABSOLUTELY no public accounting for the sales in those countries except for the occasional PR (which is immediately discounted here at GAF) and the occasional leaked numbers for 3 or 4 countries at various times.

The truth is that absolutely no one here has any conception of how many PSP's have been sold vs how many were manufactured.

We do know that for the regions tracked, Nintendo has a significant advantage in ALL of them. However, that in itself, does not give folks license to conclude what the actual PSP numbers are, especially since they don't know the DS numbers.

Again, I'm not arguing that there aren't significant PSP's in the channel or that the DS is doing much better. All I'm saying is it's absolutely ridiculous to "guess" the number, assume Sony is insane, and come up with ridulous reasons to validate the invalidatable.

 

[AdmiralViscen]

 

[Frankfurter]

Yes it is. Just type in 'western europe countries' into google, nearly all the links on the first page say it is. I live in europe and I always would have thought the same.

That's a great proof. Just btw. I live in ... Germany ... so ... um ... I should know it. My teachers told me that I live in Central Europe, wikipedia in various languages tells me that I live in Central Europe.

 

[Roders5]

These are taken from just the first page of my search on google:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_Europe
http://www.countriesandcities.com/regions/western-europe.htm
http://www.admi.net/westeur/
http://www.cdc.gov/travel/westeurp.htm
http://www.essex.ac.uk/armedcon/world/europe/western_europe/default.html
http://www2.etown.edu/vl/westeuro.html
http://www.nato.int/docu/handbook/2001/hb1504.htm
http://www.cmykpages.com/hndlr/ORIGIN/itmid/455F4D4E7275706F6500000000000000.html

Here's what united nations says:
http://unstats.un.org/unsd/methods/m49/m49regin.htm#europe

Obviously not 100% of people think it is western europe, but the majority see it that way.

 

[Deku]

Who said it only applies to Sony? Do you know when the DS was launched in the other regions or what those sales are? The difference between Sony's reporting and Nintendo's is that Nintendo says their numbers are sales, and they are unquestioned by anybody here. They've built that trust. But do you know which countries constitute the sales by percentage?

So... you're arguing because Sony doesn't have trust here and their numbers are fuzzy shipped figures, we should give them even more benefit of the doubt by assuming they sold more than we're seeing?

Doesn't make sense. These smaller markets combined, can't contribute something like you're suggesting. By your own words, you accept 2-3 million are probably unsold, which would mean there's a combined market for PSPs that's 3-4 million in size. That would have shown up somewhere.

It's not like anybody here has the tracking sales for Europe to be able to align them with Nintendo's numbers. In fact, they don't seem to try. It's assumed that they are right.

You can keep saying "phantom markets'" until you're blue in the face, but it doesn't make the fact go away.

They're phantom markets because more than likely, what you're suggesting will result in the double counting of sales/shipped numbers.

Sony launched the PSP is almost 100 regions in Sept of last year and yet we have ABSOLUTELY no public accounting for the sales in those countries except for the occasional PR (which is immediately discounted here at GAF) and the occasional leaked numbers for 3 or 4 countries at various times.

You mean territories. But whatever. I can put two pronvices and state together and call it a region. It's their perogative to call it what they want. 100 regions could end up being a few large regions we already accounted for. And saying they launched in 100 regions, doesn't make your argument more convincing.

Nintendo also launched world wide. They didn't say its 100 regions, but they sell in more or less the same countries, territories and regions (NA, SA, Asia, Europe)

The truth is that absolutely no one here has any conception of how many PSP's have been sold vs how many were manufactured.


We do know that for the regions tracked, Nintendo has a significant advantage in ALL of them. However, that in itself, does not give folks license to conclude what the actual PSP numbers are, especially since they don't know the DS numbers.

Again, I'm not arguing that there aren't significant PSP's in the channel or that the DS is doing much better. All I'm saying is it's absolutely ridiculous to "guess" the number, assume Sony is insane, and come up with ridulous reasons to validate the invalidatable.

There's good reason for Sony to have overshipped and we've seen the gap between sales/shipped long before it came out they shipped 19 m worldwide. So a lot of that may have been contributed in 2005 and early 2006 when they still thought they could meet their expected sales.

And it's not ridiculous to 'guess' a number when the same standards apply to everyone else. It gives us the best picture we have for WW data, regardless of whether you like it or not. What you're suggesting is to give Sony special preference because you think their numbers have been undercounted. That's even worse than the system you are complaining about.

 

[jarrod]

PSP wasn't a later launch. It launched in all PAL regions Sept 1st.

Sorry, I was thinking 360. My mistake.

I can rule out 5.5M PSP's being unsold by a couple of things. Known Western European sales + NPD + Media Create + Australia/NZ + Korea have all had some numbers released and ever since the European launch the comparisons have been completely fuxxored.

Can you explain this one a little better? I'm not following your reasoning?

The second reason is that Sony is not stupid and retailers aren't stupid along with them. Why would ANYONE believe that Sony is month after month continously manufacturing PSP's when they haven't even come close to selling the shipments they made back before December of last year. Hell, they made another 1M units between June 30th and July 24th of this year.

Unless you guys honestly believe that Sony is on some deranged bent to destroy their company by having billions of $$$'s of unsold PSP's out there, at an increasing rate nontheless, just from a purely reasonable standpoint, you CANNOT believe that Sony would be that stupid.

Stupidity doesn't have to enter the equation. I think it's rather easy to see where SCEI might've overestimated manufacturing for continued demand, chosen to store extra inventory, coordinated the schedule around stockpiling pre-PS3 fabbing, etc. There's lots of reasoning behind PSP potentially having 33% of production unsold (to consumers) that doesn't automatically involve mental deficiencies or suicidal notions.

Just look at the already used netWalkman example. Things don't always go as planned...

Also, my reason for doubting 5.5 is not merely unaccounted for sales. It also accounts for defectives, which if we assumed say 2% of PSP's were defective/returned that would be 400k units.

This is a rather good reason actually... I'd imagine PSP likely having a somewhat higher than industry standard defect rate thanks to the disc drive and exotic screen too.

I just finished posting this and you make this ridiculous argument. :lol

Sony "strong arming" retail? Retail likes to have millions of units of unsold inventory for 6-9 months ahead? Sony's building super warehouses to hold millions of units?

I literally can't believe you typed that and it's even sadder that you consider it to be possible.

It was just a few potential factors... I wouldn't attribute Sony Corp's perpetual overshipping of PSP to just these alone though, there's likely a lot of reasons adding up, and from more contributors than just Sony. Not surprising to find you twist wording and start in with the insults though... desperate times call for desperate measures.

 

[jarrod]

The truth is that absolutely no one here has any conception of how many PSP's have been sold vs how many were manufactured.

So "the truth is"... you can't rule out 33% of production not being sold through?

All I'm saying is it's absolutely ridiculous to "guess" the number, assume Sony is insane, and come up with ridulous reasons to validate the invalidatable.

So by extension, wouldn't it be equally ridiculous to guess that the number doesn't match/exceed 5.5 million? Since it's invalidatable and all?

Also, I've noticed the only posters bringing up notions of any insanity on Sony's part, seem to be the ones using the idea as their main basis for how PSP couldn't possibly have 5.5 units not in consumer hands. Seems like a rather good example of "ridulous reasons to validate the invalidatable", no?

 

[Square2005]

EDIT: Updated the graph again: I was adding 45% to EU should've been 58% to include the addition 45% sc quoted.
Okay I've updates the PSP graph:
What do you guys think?

Asia now includes South Korea where 200k were sold from May/05 to Sept/05 according to Sony.
NA numbers were reduced after looking at available Canadian sales again.
PAL numbers are increased 58% (to add 45%, from sc) from that 2.44m figure to include all other PAL territories.

This narrows the gap to 4.0m including defective units, putting total WW sales at:
15.01m as of July. 79% sold-thru, up from 71%.

 

[Rice-Eater]

This narrows the gap to 4.5m including defective units, putting total WW sales at:
14.56m as of July. 76% sold-thru, up from 71%.

That sounds about right to me, or close enough at least.

 

[neondriver]

Yes it is. Just type in 'western europe countries' into google, nearly all the links on the first page say it is. I live in europe and I always would have thought the same.

I live in Germany, and I know I am not living in western europe

 

[chadums90]

Whether or not it "is" or "should be" called Central Europe - it is still referred to as Western Europe by many people throughout the world. Get over it and move on - Or should we start talking about whether or not Texas and Florida should be considered part of the American "South" even though many don't view them as Southern? The Census Bureau calls them Southern even though they have great cultural differences from the rest of the "South". Can we just move on and accept that maybe Germany "is" Central Europe but lots of people still CALL it Western Europe?

Anyway, these arguments are ridiculous. We should definately be critical and entertain the possibility that 5.5 million PSPs are NOT in warehouses, but we don't have any facts to back it up, so the very first place we start is believing that the PSPs ARE in warehouses. The burden of proof is on people trying to prove that they aren't sold, not the other way around. Also - let's add the fact that shipped DS #'s are almost IDENTICAL to sold. Why would PSPs sell like hotcakes in these "other" markets while the DS has virtually zero sales?

Are you guys just arguing for the sake of arguing?

 

[Roders5]

I live in Germany, and I know I am not living in western europe

The only people who seem to disagree are the people who live in germany! Look, its not that important and there doesn't seem to be an 'official' list, but it seems quite clear to me that the majority of people and resources think of germany as being included in 'western europe'.

 

[neondriver]

Whether or not it "is" or "should be" called Central Europe - it is still referred to as Western Europe by many people throughout the world.

But I thought this quote came from the press event at the GC, which took part in Germany? I wouldn't be that surprised if they used this term to show how relevant non-western-europe countries like germany are, still compared to the big markets like UK.

 

[donny2112]

Following Occam's razor you're going to say that a company which borrows money to manufacture hardware hasn't sold a single unit it's made in all of 2006, yet continues to pump out at breakneck speed a product which is only selling 66% of what's being put out there, and without a single real price drop!?

You know, Sony has this really expensive console coming out. You may have heard of it. PS and then some number.

Spoiler

On a side note, that $1 billion loan was just normal business for Sony. It made news, because they changed to getting a loan vs. whatever they used to do due to market conditions. Some people here made it out as Sony needed money to cover the losses with the PS3 (or to manufacture it), but that wasn't the case by my understanding.

BTW, Occam's razor is often misapplied.

If these numbers were correct retailer purchases would have flatlined, but since that obviously isn't the case, the gigantic disparity just can't be true.

In Sony's most recent financials, didn't they show a forecasted drop in shipped PSPs compared to the same quarter last year?

Then explain to me how Sony shareholders would let them get away with manufacturing millions more PSPs than anybody's actually buying.

They will eventually be bought, and Sony makes a profit on the PSP. They need all the profit sources they can get their hands on with the PS3 launching so cheaply compared to its actual cost.

It's not like anybody here has the tracking sales for Europe to be able to align them with Nintendo's numbers.

I believe Nintendo announced 5.5 million sell-through in Europe around the launch (or shortly thereafter) of the DS Lite.

I personally just stick to tallying up the three major regions (and if possible only Japan and U.S. as we get consistent numbers for those) and mostly stay away from "worldwide" numbers. I think that's a safe thing to do as the difference between PSP and DS outside of those three regions is probably relatively insignificant. I do assume that when we get "Europe" numbers for either the PSP or the DS that they're talking the same countries, though.

 

[Square2005]

The PSP graph on the first page has been updated. Now we're down to 4 million in inventory. PAL has now sold more then NA.

 

[jarrod]

Asia now includes South Korea where 200k were sold from May/05 to Sept/05 according to Sony.

It moved 130k it's first 6 weeks though iirc, meaning sales slowed to 70k for the next 2.5 months... you may be over attirbuting Korean sales.

PAL numbers are increased 45% (from sc) from that 2.44m figure to include all other PAL territories.

There seems to be some dispute over the exact definition of "Western Europe" though. You'd think at a trade show held in Germany, using the term to highlight sales wouldn've been indicative of Germany at least being included and rather highliting it's own significance, no?

Also, what makes you think "Eastern Europe" wasn't accounted for in the 2.44m figure? It highlited a few regions, but it didn't make any concrete distinction that it was cumulative. Plus, it's been said that the 45% figure pertains to revenue (not userbase) and at that likely revenue driven more by the comparably budget PS2 line than the comparably expensive PSP line.

This narrows the gap to 4.5m including defective units, putting total WW sales at:

As an aside, will we see an updated DS chart, factoring in similar shifts? Or do you think PSP has outsold DS in PAL regions by 200k?

 

[donny2112]

Or should we start talking about whether or not Texas and Florida should be considered part of the American "South" even though many don't view them as Southern? The Census Bureau calls them Southern even though they have great cultural differences from the rest of the "South".

Try telling someone in Texas that they aren't part of the South. You might just get punched.

Florida? Meh. "The farther south you go in Florida, the farther North you are."

 

[heidern]

The only people who seem to disagree are the people who live in germany! Look, its not that important and there doesn't seem to be an 'official' list, but it seems quite clear to me that the majority of people and resources think of germany as being included in 'western europe'.

It doesn't matter what the majority of people think. The point is, in this case Sony were NOT including Germany in western Europe. Sorry, but the idea that UK, Germany, France, Spain etc only make up 55% of the European market and that such robust economies as Romania and Latvia make up 45% for Sony is ridiculous.

You probably got UK, France and Spain accounting for over 2 million, with the rest helping psp to 2.5M in western Europe. Then Italy, Germany etc get the other 2M bringing it up to 4.5M or so. That ain't too bad at all for a shade under a year worth of sales. In fact it makes sense that Sony are overshipping, I mean if the psp is hitting well over 200K a month or possible 300K a month then, well we're into the last 4 months of the year and you'd expect some major sales for the holiday season.