"An anti-love letter to vendors this year"

[Derek_Meister]

Here’s a fun little rant from a game retail employee ripped from another forum, reprinted here because some of you might find it interesting.

@[Hazed_Red

(The Something Awful Forums)] Ah, vendors. It’s that time of the season again, and I just wanted to thank you so much for help making this holiday season such a beautiful success. You prepared far ahead of time, dotted your i’s, crossed your t’s, and made sure that we retailers wouldn’t be without your merchandise this year.

Or wait, no you didn’t. You failed. Miserably. In fact, some of you royally fucked it up for the second or third time. Congratulations in totally blowing away all my expectations in the wrong direction.

Microsoft, your Xbox’s are hot, hot, hot. I realize you’re not making a dime off your division, but you could at least, you know, ship the damn things. It might help. I know, I know. They’re in high demand, or at least you want them to appear that way. You’ve been feeding us that excuse for almost 8 months now. Funny, because it looked like you were trying the whole, “Reduce supply to increase demand” thing back in the summer, and it’s even funnier since it looks like that came back to bite you in the ass this holiday season. You stated in one of your memos to us that we’re simply selling them faster than you can fabricate them. That’s certainly a nice thought, but we stopped believing we were that good 6 fucking months ago. If you were shipping us at least 15 ‘Boxes a week, we’d believe that line. But seeing how we were getting shipments of 4 every month back in August, the pat you’re giving us on the back just loses that special something. Sure, you’ve almost managed to ship us 30 a month now, but since that still doesn’t even begin to cover the demand, I’m gonna say you’re full of shit.

Nintendo, I’m not as mad at you. But I am still upset. At least you warned us ahead of time that the DS was going to be short back in September. At least you ramped up production as best you could and delivered on your promises. At least you started increasing your production of GameCubes and Advance SP’s all the way back to August. That’s all great, but why in the hell are you not marketing your merchandise? Seriously, Reggie, we’re having a WTF moment. You’ve got great products, awesome bundles this year, and killer prices, but it’s lacked any push, and it pales in comparison to Microsoft’s efforts. We can only do half the job. Advertising on Adult Swim is great and progressive and hip and shit, but dammit, that’s not the only target group that buys your stuff. Seriously, you’ve missed so many goddamn opportunities with that.

Sony, I struggle to come up with words to describe how I feel about you. I’ll begin with a simple, “Fuck you, and die.” Seriously, you guys need to get your collective heads out of your collective asses. Your PS2 launch was embarrassing, but to some extent excusable. Your gaping wide licensing policy worked great for creating volume, but you’ve also pushed the market to the brink of over-saturation. Your attempt to thwart piracy by changing certain aspects of your discs was certainly understandable, but I think you fucked the entire execution. You see, it’s not as if you guys are known for making reliable hardware. So when you decide to change the BIOS seemingly every fucking week because your brilliant index changes or magical blue discs don’t stop piracy, we start losing faith. You see, we don’t like it when people bring their machines back to us because they won’t read “the new discs”, whatever they might be. We don’t like it because then it becomes our problem, and short of telling them, “Sony fucked you in the ass, and I’m not gonna help you,” there’s not much we can do beside take the hit for the customer. And it hurts, Sony. When we start shipping back piles of PS2’s to you (and we have), I think there’s a problem.

I wish that was the only issue. Sony, your hardware design is shit. Putting that huge grill on the front-bottom of the system was dumb. It’s the first place to clog with dust. But making it so that the air had to be pulled up and out of the exhaust fan was even better, since it’s nigh impossible for the dust to get back out. Fuck gravity. Let’s not forget how easily the laser lenses will misaligne if it’s so much as jarred once, or how that tray mechanism breaks down so quickly. And you know what? We were really excited when the new PSTwo’s came out, because we figured, “Hey, they’ve had 4 years leading up to this. Surely they fixed what was wrong with the old one.” Wrong. You fixed old problems to make new mistakes. Reducing the heat sink to almost nothing was a thumbs-up, because hey, I like it when my system over-heats. It makes me look macho when I’m bragging to my PC friends. Making the fan smaller and weaker was also a great move, because it’ll pull less dust in, am i rite? Who the fuck needs air circulation anyway? I’m also happy to see that you didn’t coordinate efforts with your developers to prevent issues like freezing and faulty mem card writes, because shit, I didn’t want to play Call of Duty, ATV Off Road Fury 3, or GTA: San Andreas on a PSTwo anyway. You just helped me realize that. Oh, and let’s not forget how you tried to bleed out the old model PS2’s without making enough PSTwo’s to keep production volume consistent, especially right before Christmas. We’re all happy to have wish lists a mile long, and we love having customers getting pissed at us because we don’t have any, and I’m especially looking forward to people trying to return/exchange the refurbished or used PS2’s they ended up settling for when we get enough new ones in stock in January. Really, thanks a lot. You fucking win Sony. Great job.

In short, thank you vendors. You’ve made all your retail partners look like class-A assholes this year.

[Editer]

This guy has all the solutions! How on earth can he be stuck in a retail job? He should be fixing Sony!

[Mike_Hussey]

I just heard a BBC news item saying that that UK retailers are having the same problem with Playstations. A Sony (UK) spokesman blamed a number of factors, such as Sony understimating the number of existing PS2 owners wanting to upgrade to the new model.

My favourite excuse though was that part of the problem was due to ships being stuck in the Suez Canal.

(Christmas Morning)

‘Daddy! Where’s my PS2?’

‘It’s in the Suez Canal, son’

[Boss]

New model PS2s are going for over $200 on eBay. There are none available at most stores. They are definitely in short supply. Sony screwed up very badly. Microsoft’s Xbox is sold out many places too but it’s not as bad as Sony. Nintendo has product out there but it’s moving slow.

This is pretty close to the retail truth.

[quatoria]

It’s really damned frustrating that sony would release a new model ps2 to fix the fatal flaws of the first model ps2 - only to introduce a new, much WORSE fatal flaw. As bad as the dust clogging and laser misalignment was, at least it was something you could fix or work around. The overheating problem that this new ‘oh it’s so cute’ teensy tiny ps2two is impossible to fix without installing some kind of new cooling (which there isn’t room for) and has the potential to cause permenant damage to the system. I’m also hearing reports that it makes it nearly impossible to play games like San Andreas - though this post is the first report I’ve seen of faulty memory card writes. Come to think of it, though, I have heard people recently complaining about their savegames getting corrupted, but no mention was made of what model hardware they had. Frigging sony.

[Ephraim]

Quatoria:

Do you have a source for the claim that the new model PSTwo is prone to overheating? I’ve got a friend who’s eager to buy one, and I mentioned the issue, but he claims it’s just an Internet rumour.

I’d love a source to pass along.

Thanks!

/Eph

[Boss]

I’ve got one of the new ones and it’s had no problems. I know some people have been complaining, but I don’t think it’s some kind of epidemic or anything. I guess if you leave it on all day and night, then yeah, it’ll get hot enough to melt or something. shrug

The new one has a one year warranty too compared to 90 days on the original PS2. That should help alleviate any fears.

[RickH]

@Boss

New model PS2s are going for over $200 on eBay. There are none available at most stores. They are definitely in short supply. Sony screwed up very badly. Microsoft’s Xbox is sold out many places too but it’s not as bad as Sony. Nintendo has product out there but it’s moving slow.

This is pretty close to the retail truth.

I was just at the Garland, TX Fry’s and they had more than a dozen in stock. They actually had fewer Xboxes than PS2’s.

[Jenn]

I picked up one of the new PSTwo’s at launch and I’ve been playing it quite consistently. I haven’t had any kind of memory card problems with PS2 or PS1 games. I find it does get awfully warm. I always unplug it when I’m not using it, but the system will become noticeably warm after an hour or two. It has yet to affect the game play, though I do get a little nervous about the system after 3 or 4 hours and make sure I take a break (which isn’t necessarily a bad thing, it just shouldn’t be a design flaw that leads to the breaks). Right now, however, my PSTwo is collecting dust since I’m too busy with Mario DS and Final Fantasy Dawn of Souls.

[Shadarr]

I believe when the writer refered to memory card issues he wasn’t talking about a flaw in the PSTwo, but the Viewtiful Joe 2 demo that erased memory cards.

[Derek_Meister]

@[Gamespot

(http://www.gamespot.com/news/2004/12/09/news_6114764.html)] Sony reportedly addresses PlayStation 2 shortages by air freighting units directly from factories in China. Analysts wonder: To what end?
Sony officials today confirmed to Reuters that the company was using the expensive means of air freight to get as many PlayStation 2 units as possible onto console-starved retailer shelves in the US. The units are being flown directly from manufacturing facilities in China to US shores, according to Reuters.

The unidentified spokesperson said the practice had been going on "for some time."

The industry has been watching the PS2 shortage story play out now for months. In a memo sent to investors this morning, Friedman, Billings, Ramsey & Co. analyst Shawn Milne said, “As expected, PS2 supply remains an issue.” He projects that a shortfall of just 200,000 units would impact publishers of PS2 software to the tune of $11.6 million. That’s more than $11 million in lost revenue.

"We lowered our PS2 hardware unit assumption to 2.75 million in the December quarter from 3.1 million in the year-ago quarter and slightly reduced our PS2 software growth estimate from 10 percent to 8 percent. We believe the PS2 hardware shortfall may limit upside in software sales in the quarter," Milne said in the memo.

American Technology Research analyst P.J. McNealy told Reuters, "The additional costs could cut any margin [Sony] makes on the PS2 unit nearly in half." He commented that even in spite of the extra efforts Sony is going to take to address the shortfall, it likely won’t be enough to prevent shortages in some markets.

Industry analyst Boris Markovich of TerraNova Institutional told GameSpot today, "Sony bled the channel dry of the older PS2 systems but did not ramp the new hardware fast enough to satisfy consumer demand." Still, he didn’t sound entirely critical. "Clearly, Sony is trying to do everything it can in order to satisfy retailer demand for the hardware."

But "everything" may not even be enough. Markovich concludes that today's November revenue figures released by sales tracking company NPD reflect the ongoing shortages of PS2 consoles. "We believe that today's weaker-than-expected NPD results of only 2 percent industry growth in November were directly attributable to the PS2 shortage."

[Sam_Jones]

@Derek_Meister

[quote=Gamespot] Sony reportedly addresses PlayStation 2 shortages by air freighting units directly from factories in China. Analysts wonder: To what end?

[/quote]

So they can sell the games to run on the consoles. Duh, analysts. PeeEssTwos are also off the shelves in the UK too. I’m loaning my old model to a colleague over Xmas so his sons won’t be disappointed on The Day, and until he can get hold of one that isn’t in some gougingly priced bundle.

[Mike_Hussey]

@Sam_Jones

I’m loaning my old model to a colleague over Xmas so his sons won’t be disappointed on The Day, and until he can get hold of one that isn’t in some gougingly priced bundle.

Actually Sam, the Sony spokesman I referred to above was promising that the shortage, in the UK at least, would be over in time for Christmas, whether this means that they won’t be gougingly priced is doubful of course.