Sony continues to ride the aftershock of an impressive E3 showing that resulted in a standing ovation as PS4 pre-orders remain strong 10 days after retailers first made them available. Sustained interested in PS4 and steady sales raises questions about whether Sony will be able to actually fulfill them all when launch day arrives, presumably sometime in November just ahead of Black Friday assuming there are no production delays.
Online retailer Amazon.com sold out of their PS4 launch-day guaranteed consoles within 48 hours of first being added to the website. Some customers who subsequently pre-ordered a PS4 standard console were upgraded to a launch day console after the fact, but not all.
While this was going on, an analyst report suggested PS4 console pre-orders were outselling Xbox One pre-orders by a margin of approximately two-to-one. Sony alloted Amazon.com additional PS4 units for launch day, but Amazon wisely chose to bundle them with a game rather than sell them individually.
The arrival of the PS4 bundles at Amazon.com fragmented sales and allowed the lone Xbox One Day One sku to rise to the top of Amazon’s video game bestsellers list. The launch day PS4 was already sold out, so now PS4 pre-orders were split between the standard console and four bundles. Three of those bundles, Watch Dogs, Battlefield 4 and Killzone Shadow Fall, immediately broke into the top 20 bestsellers list and have remained there since their debut. Watch Dogs has proven to be the PS4 bundle of choice amongst early adopters.
Further evidence of PS4’s sales strength comes from Amazon’s Top 100 bestsellers in video games for the entire year of 2013. Keeping in mind that this includes The Last of Us and BioShock Infinite, the PS4 launch day console is currently ranked number two, behind only a $20 PlayStation Network card.
One would think that at some point Amazon will take away the PS4 pre-orders for launch day bundles, which are currently the only guaranteed way to purchase a PS4 console and have it ready to play on the first day its available in stores. When that day arrives is up for debate and anyone’s best guess, which is why I already pre-ordered mine rather than tempt fate and end up having to wait until early 2014 for delivery.