UK still suffering PSP shortage; Xbox 360 situation even worse
by Conrad Quilty-Harper 
{ Nov 14th 2005 at 4:15PM }
In an article from September 27th this year, The Scotsman talks about a PSP shortage affecting the profits
of one of the UK's premier game retailers: GAME Stores. According to the report, GAME lost £14.7 million in the first
half of the year, due in part to this shortage. You'd have thought that today, 10 weeks after the launch of the PSP in
the U.K. these shortages would have disappeared. Unfortunately that's just not the case.
Today Joystiq popped down to a couple of local video game stores to check out the current situation regarding PSP
consoles. According to one quite frustrated GAME employee, the PSP demand still well and truly outweighs supply. The
store is apparently promised "100 consoles every week, in reality we get something like 10" — which promptly sell
immediately. The situation is similar in other stores in the U.K., with Virgin Megastores, HMV and other PSP retailers
still failing to meet the demand of the PSP. In a boost for Nintendo, the same stores all had DS consoles in stock.
With the christmas buying season appearing on the horizon, the situation can only get worse. Unfortunately for GAME CEO Martin Long, there could quite possibly be a repeat of last christmas unprecedented breakdown in the supply of PlayStation 2 consoles [which] led to sales falling by a fifth, except this time with PSPs.
The GAME employee also gave his advice for how to purchase an Xbox 360 if one was so inclined. A faint smile of sympathy formed across his face as he said wait until after Christmas. Whats the situation regarding PSPs and Xbox 360s at your local GAME, Virgin or HMV store?
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
elmer @ Dec 18th 2005 9:42PM
The stores near me actually all seem full of unsold PSP value pack stock, gathering dust if any were allowed to form in the london weather atm. But then again, central London does get all the attention. In other news:
Virgin Advertises Resident Evil 4 as available EXCLUSIVELY for PS2, despite the fact we've been playing it since May on GC.
DS (+GBA) are relegated to the back of the stores, despite both topping hardware sales charts
Alex K. @ Dec 18th 2005 9:42PM
in the US, there's a surplus, and in the UK there's a shortage.
it's pretty obvious here that sony has no clue how to launch a console. the PSP has been out for 6 months now, and sony still can't keep up?
it's nothing to be dissapointed about, it's sony's own fault. if sony wanted to make more money, than they'd supply more consoles.
Stewart @ Dec 18th 2005 9:42PM
Yup big PSP shortage here in Scotland, been round 10 stores in Ayr, Glasgow, Irvine none have PSPs and NONE are taking preorders for anything before christmas.
Game in Ayr said that they still have about half of all preorders made BEFORE launch still to fulfill!
Just hoping the Giga Pack I have ordered through Gameplay will arrive, if not its going to be a quick hop to find an importer.
spike @ Dec 18th 2005 9:42PM
To be honest I find this hard to believe. The latest sales figures I can find for uk are
22. - 29. October:
NDS: 30,000
GBA SP: 15,500
PSP: 12,900
14. - 21. October:
DS: 23,035
GBA SP: 10,034
PSP: 8,000
from here http://ds-x2.com/index.php?id=4489
Now I would imagine there are about 8,000 places in the UK to buy a PSP at least, with larger quantities of stock going to the bigger stores which would imply some stores aren't getting any PSPs at all. This is complete BS.
Balazs @ Dec 18th 2005 9:42PM
I got my PSP from HMV and i my town they were the only shop to have it in at all. That was 5 week ago. I cant imagine what its like now!
Conrad Quilty-Harper @ Dec 18th 2005 9:42PM
Spike, I've yet to see a PSP available for sale in any of the stores I've checked. Last week I was down in London and checked 2 HMVs and 2 Virgin Megastores on Oxford Street, the biggest shopping district in the UK. All the stores were sold out.
The stores I checked today were in the centre of Hull, a relatively large city. As I've mentioned earlier they're all sold out. This is naturally the situation on-the-ground. It doesn't accommodate for online sales, which may be a factor in those figures.
Your last point is wrong regarding the number of stores. You'll find that there a much smaller number of stores selling games than 8,000. GAME (UK's #1 game retailer) only has 400 stores across the UK.
Mikael T?vist @ Dec 18th 2005 9:42PM
"DS (+GBA) are relegated to the back of the stores, despite both topping hardware sales charts", it's the same here. Ridicilous... it's like they don't trust how well Nintendo does on the handhelds, and choose to rely on the PSP even though it sells way less.
Stuart @ Dec 18th 2005 9:42PM
I had a problem obtaining one in Glasgow 3 weeks ago on a Saturday afternoon. Tried 3 GAME stores, 2 HMV, 2 Gamestation, The Sony Centre, a Dixons and everything else in the city centre. Eventually, I managed to find one in the smaller of the two Virgin Megastores in town, who had received an order of just 3 within the previous hour.
When it comes to Xbox 360, i'm not gonna even try asking any of those shops as its pointless until after Xmas.
I work as a Stock Controller for Tesco, so i'll be checking our SBO system over the next few weeks to see if it appears, and if it does i'm phoning one of the larger stores (as ours doesn't stock video games) to set one aside for myself.
mo @ Dec 18th 2005 9:42PM
"if sony wanted to make more money, than they'd supply more consoles." #2 - Alex K.
Ah!! But there's the rub. PSP isn't making Sony any money at all. Quite the reverse in-fact.
It does make me wonder though what the hell Sony are playing at. Have they given up on PSP and concentrating all available resources on PS3/Blu-ray?
Jez @ Dec 18th 2005 9:42PM
I got my PSP from the Carphone Warehouse of all places. Went into GAME today to ask about 360s and the guy was fairly optimistic; they're taking phone numbers to call if they get more stock than they are expecting. A Gamestation manager has given me hints about the number of core systems available, too -- beg and plead with your local store to see if they have any left? The hard drive isn't that much more expensive bought separately.
Akz @ Dec 18th 2005 9:42PM
See!, an all you Americans thought u had it bad!!! we can even get hold of any damn Sony PSP's let alone any Xbox 360's!!!!! :(
Akz @ Dec 18th 2005 9:42PM
Sorry 4 the spellin mistake i just made, must be because i'm mad with the current gaming situation!! which is even worser for us brits!
Frexy @ Dec 18th 2005 9:42PM
"DS (+GBA) are relegated to the back of the stores, despite both topping hardware sales charts"
EXACTLY the same here. DS games are all put into the back of the store, while PSP games are in front, almost 'luring' the customers into the shop. I mean, ok, you can place games in front of a shop, but it's all about Sony's name, teh PS brand, the owners know it sells well, so they put the PSP stuff in front too...
It's weird, but that's the way things are I suppose (and then again, Belgium is a PS crazy country)
Alex K. @ Dec 18th 2005 9:42PM
"Ah!! But there's the rub. PSP isn't making Sony any money at all. Quite the reverse in-fact." - mo
yes, of course, but the more people have consoles, the more people buy games, which should mean revenue from licensing fees can rise.
i can't imagine sony setting up their business in a way to prevent high sales, but as i learned in economics class, unless a company makes an extravagant amount of money off their products, the amount they are willing to supply is entirely based off of the price and demand - and obviously, the higher the price, the higher the supply.
whether or not sony actually wants to have a large user base, they still lose either way, since nintendo is selling more consoles and making more money (i dont think the PSP has made a dime, either, it's still losing money, whereas nintendo has this thing where they like to make money on hardware purchased on its own, even if you don't buy games.)
Clint @ Dec 18th 2005 9:42PM
Ok. So xbox 360 is in short supply to make people want it more, but psp is in short supply because sony is stupid. i get it. This site is so biased against sony.
Do you not think maybe sony is playing the same limited supply game that microsoft is playing?
realvictory @ Dec 18th 2005 9:42PM
"DS (+GBA) are relegated to the back of the stores, despite both topping hardware sales charts"
People are more likely to be looking for GBA or DS games, so if they put PSP games in between, they're forced to look at them on the way, so it's more likely they'll buy one.
"Ok. So xbox 360 is in short supply to make people want it more, but psp is in short supply because sony is stupid."
It's because they're not making enough! Whether that's on purpose or not, who can tell? If people want to buy one but there aren't enough, it's stupid either way. Unless the company lose money on it, in which case, it's stupid anyway.
Bender @ Dec 18th 2005 9:42PM
Here in Australia there's plenty of PSP's on the shelves. Plenty of DS's as well. No DS software tho - I've been trying to buy Castlevania for about a month and it's always sold out. Aparently the local distributor doesn't realise the popularity of the console.
Black Ops @ Dec 18th 2005 9:42PM
There are tons available here in the stores near me (in the US). How odd, we have more than we can handle. UK has none. Sounds like a distribution problem.
Sockatume @ Dec 18th 2005 9:42PM
"According to the report, GAME lost 14.7 million in the first half of the year, due in part to this shortage." How on earth can there have been a shortage in the first half of the year when the PSP wasn't even released here yet?
Whitster @ Dec 18th 2005 9:42PM
It dosent seem to bad at the GAME I go to(Preston, England). There's two of them and in just one of the stores they receieved a healthy batch of 300 PSP's at the start and as far as I know have enough supply in now.
Though the Xbox 360 is another story. I had one pre-ordered but for financial reasons had to cancel it. The guy at the shop thought I was insanse saying "You could easily make a 300% profit on it on eBay if you do get it and just sell it." Apparentley they are getting just 60 Xbox 360's in when they already have well over 100 pre orders and growing each day.
In another smaller store they had 48 pre-orders but may even struggle to fill even half of them.
Michael May @ Dec 18th 2005 9:42PM
There are 2 GAMEs here in Kingston, but I'm doubtful as to whether there will be any 360s there. I haven't checked about PSPs as I'm not interested in them really. I preordered my 360 off the GAME website a week or 2 ago, so I'm hoping that they'll have enough stock to ship to me before the end of the year. My friend preordered his in September though, first preorder in (grrr...)
Jack @ Dec 18th 2005 9:42PM
There's none here in Ireland. Has anyone ANY idea of when the next load will arrive? Some stores are taking pre-orders but others are saying there's no point as nobody knows if or when then'll be in the shops.
Jack @ Dec 18th 2005 9:42PM
I'm talking about the PSB by the way
Jack @ Dec 18th 2005 9:42PM
I'm talking about the PSP by the way
NIck @ Dec 18th 2005 9:42PM
I don't think you're going to be easily getting your hands on a 360 in the UK if the new update to the website GAME.NET is anything to go by. Well...not for the premium package anyway, they are not taking any more pre-orders. You WONT be able to get a 360 premium system in store on launch, however they are expecting a SMALL NUMBER of Core systems to be available in store, but not online.
http://shop.game.net/Update/