Sony has broken virtually every system sales record in history with the PlayStation 4, but that’s not stopped some people from pondering whether it’s attempting to increase demand by holding back stock. Unsurprisingly, SCEA president Jack Tretton has rubbished such claims, stating that the company’s working around the clock to get new units on store shelves as promptly as possible.
“I get asked a lot if we’ve created an artificial shortage in order to create a feeding frenzy, and the answer is no,” he explained on the PlayStation Blogcast.
“We have competition out there and there are lots of things that people can spend money on. The holidays only come around once a year, so that’s when we really want to take advantage of the market opportunity.”
Tretton added that the firm shipped every single unit that it could get its hands on ahead of the system’s North American launch, and that resulted in record-breaking sales. “We put a ton of machines out there – we’re at over 2.1 million worldwide now – but we are a global company,” he said. “That means that we’re now in 32 countries and there are a lot of mouths to feed.”
The executive continued that while the numbers are good, they’re clearly still considerably short of demand. “There’s additional product coming into the marketplace between now and the end of the holidays,” he reassured. “Our fiscal year ends on 31st March, so there’ll be great supplies coming post-Christmas, too.”
With the system selling one million units within its first day on sale in North America, the suit continued that it takes several weeks of stockpiling in order to attain such impressive figures. “We had multiple months of production time leading up to the release of the first units, and now they’re going out of the door as quickly as they come in,” he emphasised.
According to Tretton, the firm made 12,000 units available to Amazon.com last week, and they all sold out within 27 minutes. “It breaks my heart if somebody’s got $400 in their hand and they want a PS4 but we can't sell them one, so we’re going to try very hard to make sure that we can,” he stressed. “I don’t have a device yet because I said to sell it.”
But has Sony spread itself too thin with this launch? The console is establishing an install base in regions where the Xbox One isn’t even available yet – but there’s always the danger that the limited supply in battlegrounds such as North America and the UK could turn consumers towards the competition.
