After this week’s news that production has not yet started on the PS3 which is due to start shipping worldwide in November, Sony has confirmed the shipping numbers. They are planning on 2 million units to be available for the mid-November launch, with a further 2 million available for end of year 2006.
Something is strange with this annoucement as it doesn’t seem to fit with the fact that Sony has said they are not yet in production – time is counting down, and if they haven’t started production yet they don’t have much time to get 2 million boxes out of the door.
I can only imagine that there is some marketing strategy going on here, and by giving consumers the impression that they will be in short supply on day 1, people will be camping out over night to get their hands on one, and therefore helping increase demand. Isn’t this exactly what Microsoft did with the limited numbers for the XBox360 launch?