I'm not one to spend my free time visiting stores to check and see if PlayStation 3s are in stock, but if various first-hand reports on the Internet are to be believed (which they probably shouldn't), then supposedly the system is readily available whenever you can gather enough scratch to buy it. Well, Sony continues to say it's sold out and that they are trying to meet demand. Is this true? What do our soldiers on the front lines have to say? Here's what Sony says:
Sony Corp. is on track to ship 2 million PlayStation 3s to North American stores by the end of March, and expects shortages of the video game console to have completely eased by May, a top executive said on Tuesday. "April or May is when we feel like we're going to catch up to demand and have product fully in stock across North America and stay there," said Jack Tretton, chief executive of Sony Computer Entertainment America.
Asked about widespread reports on video game Web sites that stacks of unsold PlayStation 3s are a common sight in many electronics shops, Tretton told Reuters in an interview that the console was still out of stock in some areas three months after its November launch. "It's a testament to the fact that we've been able to manufacture and ship units on a greater pace than any previous console," Tretton said. "Our goal is to fill shelves across the United States. Our goal is not to have empty shelves, it's to have full shelves. If we have empty shelves, that's one less consumer who could have bought a PlayStation 3," Tretton said.
"Our goal is to fill shelves across the United States. Our goal is not to have empty shelves, it's to have full shelves. If we have empty shelves, that's one less consumer who could have bought a PlayStation 3"
Even here on long island PS3's are stocked everywhere.
Popular belief says Long Islanders throw money away like its yesterdays paper. if thats true then why the hell can i walk into Roosevelt field and get a PS3 at any of the stores within that mall?
I bet the Gamestop in Beverly Hills has more Ps3's than they know what to do with.
When I went to Best Buy on monday (for that sale)they had a stack of about 10 60g PS3's with a table of accesories (bluray discs, remotes, cables). But to give the guy some credit technically Europe doesn't have any ps3's on shelves so they are out of stock.
I hate to break it to Mr. Tretton...there havn't been empty shelves in weeks. The Best Buy I work at (part-time only) has had well over 30 PS3's and they havn't moved in a month. Guess they solved the "shortage" problem a month ago, huh?
I just picked up Jade Empire on PC and asked the guy at EB if they sold out of PS3's quite often and he said "Naw, the Wii is always selling, the PS3's usually just sit there for a while."
I see a few here and there, no huge stacks like some people are reporting. The point is that there is no longer a shortage though. Anyone that wants one can find one.
Best Buy in Chevy Chase DC has had all sorts of PS3s lying around and not a Wii in sight that I've ever known of beyond launch....
Next time I'm down there I'll ask the dude that works the consoles section if they are being sold and constantly replaced or if those boxes are the same ones I've been seeing the last month.
You know, I would have even believed this executive without all the snooping had Sony come out with a few decent games. Resistance got boring very quickly, and I often found myself playing it just for the sake of beating it....
Wii doesn't have a stunning lineup of games either, but they pushed out a system that was able to appeal to such a wide range of users, even with the currently limited software base (which to me doesn't look like its going to improve enough anytime soon either).
360 is still the way to go at least for the next year... I'm glad those guys are seeing a stable/constant hardware sale, because right now the software is decent, future lineups all sound rosy, and having new faces on live is always fun... except the unsupervised 10 year olds with enough ego and whiney pitch to out do a handfull of Alto's at their peak
You can find PS3s at most stores in Orlando even the warehouse clubs like BJs usually have them in stock. I've only seen the Wii in stock at once (at a Best Buy), and the clerk was actually stocking them onto the shelves, so they probably didn't last long.
While buying boxers at Target yesterday. They had 5 in stock. I believe there was spiderwebs on them. Compared to the Wii which had signs everywhere saying "Sense there is such a high demand for the Nintendo Wii. We cannot except rain checks" No 360's in stock as well. With one HD DVD drive. Also no a good stock on HD DVD's Compared to the Blu-ray all over the place.
I think Sony's lying to us, like they always seem to do the past few years. Anything to puff themselves up and look stronger than what they actually are.
Anecdotal evidence is meaningless. It's simple math.
Sony claims they are INCREASING the numbers of units they are shipping since launch.
However, sales numbers for the console are DECREASING since launch. So if they are shipping more and selling less, they can't be sold out. If they were selling out, the sales numbers would be very close to the shipping numbers, with a small amount of error for units in transit. But the numbers simply are not looking this way.
Maybe they're out of stock in some places. Not anywhere I've been. He could be telling the truth, just twisting it to sound a lot better than it really is.
Here's the way I see it. During January, you couldn't find a Wii ANYWHERE. However, there were plenty of stores that had PS3's. But when the NPD's came out, the Wii sold twice as many as the PS3.
This month is no different. Wii's are near impossible to find, PS3's are much easier now than in January to find (my best buy consistently has 10 in stock). If in fact it is selling out, my question is Where?
"Sitting on PS3s for months" is pushing it, but they're not flying off the shelves. They were during a small window after launch, but even before the holiday, they were getting harder and harder to sell.
Maybe Sony is shipping far too many consoles. Nintendo on the other hand are hardly shipping any (I overheard a clerk at a local GameStop tell a woman to check back in mid-March...a week ago), which would explain their lack of in-store stock. I'm sure the demand on that has dropped as well.
i went to Best Buy in Union NJ yesterday to buy a speaker rack and bumped into 6 PS3s that no one cared about....
i'm sure there were more but the rack was full.
then i went to the game section and there was nothing good.
i guess Sony wins if their objective was to have
full shelves.
and the people who are in Bluray section say , they HAVE to
buy movies because their PS3 is useless for games.
They are all over the place in Utah, they have been on the shelves for a while. My company bought one, and it has been freezing like crazy, both on movies and on games.
A buddy of mine works for EB Games (for shame) and I'll hang out there every once in a while. Without fail, they have 3 or 4 PS3s in stock, and yet someone comes in asking for a Wii and they are sold out. Their Wii's tend to sell out instantly.
It's at times like these that we can see how Sony really can't connect with the consumers after all the bull they threw at us. Sony has consoles available = PS3 doesn't sell, it's utter crap, etc. Nintendo isn't able to supply the customers properly = the Wii is the best thing since mexican midget wrestlers.
If it was the other way around Sony would be the idiots not being able to supply and Nintendo would be the ones who have the perfect supply chain.
Mind you, I really don't like the PS3 (only 2 planned exclusives that I like so far) and I'm really rooting for Nintendo, but it's just funny to see how Sony, with their stupid comments, has created a trend on the Net (because people who don't go on videogames blogs and websites don't give a rat's ass about all that stuff) where everything Sony is just bad when compared to Microsoft and Nintendo.
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1:32 PM on 02.28.2007 
