Calls placed to over twenty small-town retail outlets reflect demand ranging from lukewarm to red hot.
By Carl Bender - May 18, 2006
Print Email
One of the themes trumpeted recently by analysts and gaming media following the end of E3 has been the concern that with an entry point of $499, Sony may have priced itself out of the console market. At a 20% premium to it's nearest competitor, the reasons for worry seem obvious enough; but yet the situation as reflected by retail outlets seems to paint a different picture, and indicates that at least for the launch window, Sony has little to worry about.
Looking to get a feel of how demand for the Playstation 3 has been holding up post-E3, PSINext placed calls to over twenty-five gaming stores in smaller towns across the United States; EB Games and GameStops for the most part, in order to keep it simple. Smaller towns were used on the assumption that they would more accurately reflect 'Middle American' willingness to spend up to $600 on a console, and the idea that figures taken from larger urban centers such as New York or Los Angeles might provide unusually inflated levels of interest in the system relative to the rest of the nation.
In this completely unscientific survey, roughly a third of the stores contacted - in towns such as Seaford, DE and Brookhaven, MS - were not keeping lists at all, mindful of avoiding the fiasco that was the XBox 360 pre-order situation. For the other two-thirds of the retail outlets, recorded interest since E3 seemed quite strong indeed. Although two towns contacted were decidedly lukewarm at best - Gilford, NH and Petaluma, CA had roughly a dozen names each - for the most part stores contacted had consumer callback lists in the vicinity of fifty to sixty names; well above expected launch day availability.
Some towns exceeded even those figures, with standouts like Wooster, OH and Houghton Lake, MI quoting numbers in the range of one hundred listed individuals.
If Sony were able to sustain these levels of demand, sell-through could be ensured not only through the launch period, but into the following year as well. But as a cautionary note we should mention that although these gaming-specific outlets presently reflect a strong interest for the upcoming Playstation, the Playstation Portable was in a similar situation approaching it's own US debut. And though gaming stores all over the nation were sold out of the portable at the launch, ample supplies still sat untouched on the shelves of Targets and Wal-Marts.
It stands to reason, however, that the above will not be the case for the Playstation 3.
Not only will the November launch position Sony for Christmas shopping, but demand for the console seems like it will readily outstrip the US allocation of Sony's 2 million console launch figure. And though launch quantities will ultimately form a very small percentage of total shipped units over a consoles life, an early show of strength can still be crucial in allaying developer concerns and getting third-party support onboard.
As time goes on, we will contact some of these stores again to keep a finger on the 'pulse' of PS3 consumer interest, and add others to the list to broaden the sample size.
