Acutie said:
It's so funny. People are like omg 600 bucks who in the right fucking mind would ever buy that! Screw PS3! it's gonna bomb! then a few threads later omg stores aren't going to have a butt ton of PS3's AT launch! WTF
Ever think maybe store owners don't want to dump millions and millions of dollars into a item that may or may not totally bomb? Then they'd just be stuck marking them down like 20% or something, losing millions.
It just seems to me people are looking for all the bad in this. I'll bet my left nut right now if theyw ere shipping 3 million at launch people would be calling them fucking morons for shipping so many since omfg it's 600 bucks no one will buy that!
That's what's so hard about marketing. My dad owns his own store, and the thing about marketing is, you have to order stuff half a year in advance. So basically, you have to predict how good stuff will sell. Sometimes he buys too much of something that doesn't sell very well, and sometimes he buys too little of somehting that sells really well. That's why its so hard.
However, you will
rarely lose millions on an item that doesn't sell very well. One way or another, it will sell eventually. But that doesn't mean you should go out and buy a fuck ton of them, you have to be reasonable. And as long as you're reasonable, you'll do good.
The thing with PS3 is, that people will always buy it. Especially at launch date, since people want to be first to have one. It wouldn't matter how many the store buy, it WILL sell out, eventually. The reason Sony decide to ship a very limited of PS3's, is so they can make a greater profit. It means they can set a very high starting price, thus making a greater profit. All prices decline eventually, and with a high starting price, it means the price will be slightly higher then it normally would after a year.
That's the difference between Nintendo and Sony. Sony, decided to have a higher starting price through releasing a limited number of consoles, thus being able to set a high starting price. Nintendo, on the other hand, decided to counter Sony's marketing strategy by releasing a lot of consoles at a lower price. Reason Sony doesn't use the same marketing strategy, is because the PS3 is more expensive to manifacture. And if they used the same marketing strategy, they'd have to keep their prices rather low, aswell, and thus, the total gain on each unit would be lower. And since all prices decrease over time, the price of the units would eventually go dangerously close to manifacture price.
Its all about different marketing strategies. All it takes is being clever about it. Sony knows that people
will buy the first console, no matter what the price, and plays their cards accordingly. Both companies use a smart marketing strategy, and both will go in to the green. So its not really about the store owners, its with the higher-ups.