The demand towards PlayStation 3 game console may be softening in the U.S., another analyst said after checking retail stores and finding out that there are no Nintendo Wii game consoles in stock, but Sony PlayStation 3 are gaming machines are available.
“Our channel checks yesterday of 52 retail stores, from boutiques to big-box retailers, showed that 28 of the 52 stores had PS3 consoles in stock, while none had Wii consoles in stock,” American Technology Research analyst Paul-Jon McNealy said in the research note, Reuters news-agency has reported.
Nevertheless, he said that the stores – which included large and not very large – had units numbering in the low single digits, with only one major retailer having 60+ machines in stock.
Given that Sony’s PlayStation 3 costs $499 or even $599 depending on the version, there is no surprise that Nintendo Wii – which is also discussed and advertised widely – that costs $249 faces much higher demand, yet, amid much higher supply as well. Nevertheless, it is remarkable that the game console from the developer, which previous-generation gaming machine faced lukewarm welcome just several years ago, is so popular on the market that is heavily under attack by Microsoft and Sony.
Mr. McNealy said availability in stores of Sony’s PlayStation 3 game consoles does not necessarily indicate slack demand and that he would continue to monitor PS3 inventories closely. Still analysts in Japan and the U.S. have already warned about lowering demands towards the pretty expensive new-generation game consoles from Sony. Sony Computer Entertainment Inc. claims that the demand is inline with expectations, but the supplies from the company are exceeding the demand.
“It isn’t because demand has weakened, it is because we have kept the supply pipeline moving,” Dave Karraker of SCEI is reported to have said.
NPD Research, an independent market tracking agency, recently indicated that back in December there were shipped 1.132 million Xbox 360 game consoles, 604 thousand Nintendo Wii game machines and 490.7 thousand Sony PlayStation 3 much-anticipated game consoles in the USA. The same market tracking agency revealed earlier that in November end-users acquired 195 thousand PlayStation 3 machines. Thus, about 685 thousand of the PS3 game consoles were bought by end-users in calendar 2006, starting from November 17, or about 115 thousand a week. Meanwhile, Sony made available over 140 thousand of PS3s a week on average.
