Kaz Hirai talks about supply and demand issues with the PS3

December 5th, 2006, 02:33 Posted By: wraggster

Sony has an interesting "strategy": low supply creates high demand. Ah, the wonders of basic economics concerning luxury goods. In any case, Kaz Hirai recently sat down to an interview and discussed the whole PS3 supply/demand issue, among other things. Let's highlight the big points, shall we?


To compensate for the limited supply, Kaz says that Sony is chartering flights to bring systems to North America faster -- normally, items of PS3 size/weight are sent via boat. Production is ramping up also, but still... chartering flights is way more expensive than boats. Thanks, we guess?
Shipments would like to be weekly to keep up with demand, but that's up to consumers. As for grabbing one off of a retail shelf casually, that's also up to the demand of consumers and Kaz has no idea when the surplus will kick in.
Kaz says that Sony does not favor one retailer over another, so if your pre-order falls through due to unit allocation, it's the store's fault... not Sony's.
No price cut in North America for the 20GB model. Oh well, who wants that one anyway?
The bottleneck in production came from the blue laser diodes, but that's been fixed. Even so, says Kaz, "you do have a ramp-up period. You suddenly can't go from zero one day to 100,000 units the next day."
Support for the PS2 will continue for some time -- unlike other console companies who drop an old console overnight.
Kaz assures us that PS2 and PSOne titles that have compatibility issues will be ironed out with firmware updates. That's the beauty with the PS3!

Overall, it was a good interview. Nothing necessarily groundbreaking was revealed, but it's always nice to be reassured that things are okay, even if they're not. If your dog died, you'd want a hug from your mom and not a silent crying session... or something. The point is, being told nice things is nice. How can you possibly disagree?

via ps3fanboy

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