Japan to get fewer PS3 launch units due to part problems

@43

So you're going "as" Best Buy or Circuit City? I'm assuming that you mean for Halloween. I'm going as Chuck Norris. How are you making your costume?

#49

I thought Sony explained this to you guys.

Europe doesn't count.

DBX00: "You're making the assumption that each weekly PS3 shipment will equal the weekly shipments for XBOX360. In order for Sony to obtain 1 million by the end of the year, they would need to ship approximately 83,000 per week."

I think the trouble people hae with you statement is the absolute certainty that soon will actually deliver on their targets. I'm not saying they won't, but MAYBE they won't. If, for any reason, shipments drop, Sony may have significantly less than a million machines in gamer's hands by hte end of the year. I think Microsoft thought they'd have more machines out by the end of 2005 than they ended up with.

Assuming that Sony will absolutely hit their shippment targets would be like assuming that Microsoft will absolutely sell 10 million or more 360s by the end of the year.

@52 ( http://www.joystiq.com/2006/10/30/japan-to-get-fewer-ps3-launch-units-due-to-part-problems/2#c2552523 ):

http://www.thisiswaiting.com/

to #54 Andrex

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarcasm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humour

@55:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Know_You_ Twat_I_Was_Just_Contributing_Something_Else_Humurous .

Oh well. I could care less. Gears of War comes out next week, that's all I care about. :)

@54 and 55

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/you_guys_are_funny

=D

@58:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/nou

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Know

#48. "It was by far the worst experience I've had with a console launch."

You should have done what my friend did. He got his 360 on launch day from the electronics section of a grocery store. Only a couple people lined up, they still had 360s left over, sitting on the shelf for anyone to walk in and buy!

A lot of stores carry game systems. 360s were allocated to retailers based on previous XBox sales, so they were available if you knew where to look.

@57

If you "could care less" that means that you care, since there is a level of care below the level that you are expressing. This is a mistake that is commonly made. What I believe you intended to say was, "I couldn't care less." This, in contrast, portrays that this is the absolute last thing that you could care about. However, if you really do care about PS3 launch numbers in Japan, then I misunderstood your intent.

I apologize if it seems like I'm being unnecessarily harsh, but I hate to be classified as a "gamer" when the majority of our community representation write and sound like grade school drop-outs.

DBX00 - First, thank you for a reasoned discussion.

"You're making the assumption that each weekly PS3 shipment will equal the weekly shipments for XBOX360."

The reason I'm making this assumption is simple. I know when the Xbox 360 started production. I know how many demo consoles were installed in kiosks in Wal-Marts. While I didn't see the actual production rate figures, they weren't hard to figure out based on total production versus total days - and the figure came out very close to 10,000 units per day, or 70,000 per week.

I'm willing to give them the benefit of the doubt that they have their lines set-up for 12,000 units per day. Where you're going to run into difficulty is, quite literally, shipping. The PS3 weighs in at 12lbs. That means they aren't going to be sent via air freight - they'll have to come container ship. Granted there are container ships that leave frequently - but it's still 11 days from Tokyo to Los Angeles. That's why people talk about there being material in the 'pipeline' when there's not a physical pipeline - you've got to have 11 - 14 days worth of production in transit at all times.

The question becomes - and this isn't a slam, it's a kudo, actually - if they're yanking 20% due to failure or defect rate PRIOR to them hitting the market, then that's a GOOD thing. Xbox 360 had about a 6% after sale failure rate - and we all know the bad publicity that got them. Since Sony IS a Japanese company, they may be using the standard Japanese kaizen and quality control process - which should reduce the 'to consumer' defect rate, but which will result in lower actual production numbers as units are either scrapped or reworked. (I've worked for a Japanese company in past - I remember how quality control drove production nuts at times.)

Potentially on the upside, this is a good thing - they'll figure out what their problems are and fix them. On the downside, it makes them look bad because they're continually having to revise their numbers down. (Note, of course, that we're dealing with different cultures here on the production facilities for 360 and PS3 - China does NOT have the same emphasis on quality control that Japan does - so if the PS3 is made in China as well, then chances are they've got Japanese inspectors - and that could cause this additional shortage easily.)

My grade school was hard.

Anonymouse Rep

I don't disagree with anything you stated, but we are dealing with a company that has been pretty upfront with their customers about delays and productions problems in recent months. They've stated as recently as 4 days ago that they are still on target with production of the PS3 for their revised targets. We can argue about the chances of them making those targets, but the fact of the matter is that this site as well as others are posting information from a source that has yet to provide any evidence of production problems. Hence, it is my belief that they are no more informed then the analyst that cover their butts by reporting Sony will miss manufacturing targets. I don't know if they'll 'ship' 1 million consoles to the U.S. by the end of the year. However, I also don't know if they've sandbag that number and delayed the Europe launch to make sure that they reach that goal. The current CEO is a restructuring focused type of guy and from my experience this is usually the method of choice when you need to ensure success.

As far as defect rate, they could have been running test lines for months to decrease the rate to the appropriate levels. Hence, the comments they've made about resolving the manufacturing/production problems. I don't think it is unreasonable for a hardware company running two manufacturing lines for a product that has already been delayed to quickly ramp up the facilities to a 95% capacity utilization and therefore reach their targets. In conclusion, the information presented here is SIMPLY rumor until Sony comes out with the FACTS. The console will be sold out regardless of whether they ship 83,000 per week or 150,000 per week. Also, we have no idea whether the company has kept the price of the console in the U.S. at $499/$599 to allow for air frieght or if they are receiving any significant discounts since they already sell hardware globally from air frieght providers, which would significantly reduce the transit time and allow for them to build up inventory to ship large quantities per week.

Well, they don't have all those preorders from LikSang and PlayAsia to fill anymore...

Wait for it.............

Wait for it..............

You know its coming, its almost here! Oh wait, no its not! Stupid freaking shortages, broken promises, production problems, and stupid stupid Sony.

I laughed when I read this.

Then I laughed some more and told a friend.

He laughed. I laughed again.

I told a guy across the hall. He laughed as well. I laughed again.

I called a friend. He laughed, I laughed.

I start really giggling when I came up with a truly sick idea. With only 80k at launch in Japan, what are the chances that the DS Lite will out sell it in the opening week? Pretty good considering the DS Lite keep holding over 100K week by week.

Oh man... I won't get any sleep tonight...

You know what could kill off PS3 in Japan? If Blue Dragon causes the XBox 360 to outsell PS3 in the same time-period (aka by end 2006). By my estimates, they would still have under 1 mil PS3 in JP by the end of 2006. Of cause, expecting 360 to sell 1 mil in a 2 month period is a bit of an overkill, but when you combine a hardware shortage with a rival hardware with an expected killer title, and that Sony apparently prefers NA to JP, I'm not going to discount that possibility.

It wasn't too long ago that we heard that the number 400,000 was a projected goal for PS3 units shipped for the North American launch and now we hear that the 100,000 available in Japan on day one gets 20k shaved off; WOW.

At this point, I wouldn't be too surprised if come March 2007, Sony says that they'll have a "Premium, Bluray-enabled) PS3 for $600 and "Normal DVD-playing" PS3 for $400. This would make games that "need" the extra gb's worth of space, tough to break down into multiple DVD's for the non-Bluray PlayStation 3.

Then again, this might not happen at all, but Sony is really having a hard time here. They will simply get utterly destroyed in Japan this Fall by the Wii-DS combo.

I wonder if what others mentioned earlier will happen here: PS3 in N.A. down to 320,000 at launch.
Paul Gale
1up.com

I am not liking Sony all that much right now, but I certainly don't want gamers to get screwed by shortages. Still, it seems like so many things have gone wrong for Sony in the past few months, it would almost be satisfying to see it capped by something really really horrible, like if they cut the N.A. shipment size as well, or, God forbid, if at the last minute they pushed back the date (even slightly).

Not that the company is going to crash and burn anytime soon, but this whole situation is getting so ugly, you just have to watch and in some sadistic sort of way (schadenfreude?) you kind of want something terrible to happen. Or maybe that is just because I am not an early adopter of consoles and I can just watch this all unfold, the more exciting the better.

"many a fanboy was roasted in the belly of the Sloar that day, I tell you!"

crono141, you win today's award for being mother f*cking awesome. XD

You call 80,000 units a launch for Japan? I call it a Lets-ship-afew-peanuts-to-Japan-so-it-doesnt-look-like-we-delayed-another-launch.

What's new... Same old song!

Thanks Zoe!

Seems like the only country not getting "boned" by Sony is the USA. It's quite interesting how not only Europe, but JAPAN are both suffering the PS3 shortages while we sit here twiddling our thumbs and laughing our asses off. Sony betraying it's native country? This is quite ironic.