November 19, 2013 | In: Technology

The PlayStation 4 Lifted Sony (NYSE:NSE) By 2%

Note: This post should have been posted on Monday (yesterday), but for some reason, I didn’t hit the Publish button.

I admit it. I waited in a line in front of a store here in Montreal to be one of the first to get my hands on the new PlayStation 4. It’s not that I’m a gamer or anything, it’s just that it was something that I wanted to have after seeing the so many videos about it. The store was going to open at 8 AM, and I arrived to the line at 7:55 AM (by the way, you get to meet quite a few insane people in those queues), in all fairness, I didn’t know whether I’ll have a PS4 or not, but surprisingly, they gave me a number, which was 42, and apparently, they had 48 PS4’s in stock, which meant that I was guaranteed to get one. (Just so you know, the store I went to was Target in Downtown Montreal).

As soon as the store opened, the line was directed to the “electronics” section, and each one was getting his PS4. I noticed 2 things:

  1. No one, except for me and another person, bought games. It was the funniest thing, everyone had this red bag with the PS4 in it, but no games. I might be wrong, but I’m pretty sure that the PS4 is useless without games – unless, of course, they just want to play downloadable games (I doubt it) or they were just looking for a very expensive blu-ray player.
  2. Nearly everyone (except, again, for me) was bragging how he was going to get the PS4 and then sell it immediately on ebay for $600 or more. (this explains the first point)

When I got my PS4 from the clerk I noticed that there were 5 people after me, and, when the line was done and there were no more people, the store still had one unsold PS4. I’m sure that it got sold within the next 30 minutes, but you get the point. There was one unsold PS4 on PS4’s launch date.

As soon as I got the PS4, I went back to my office, and checked ebay, and it literally had thousands of PS4’s for sale, which meant that most of these people that waited in line just wanted to make a little money out of the PS4 – they never intended to use it.

Interestingly, Sony’s stock was literally unchanged on Friday (the launch date), but on Monday (yesterday), the stock went up by 2% because of the PS4. I have a few questions here:

  • Why did the stock go up? Initial sales don’t say anything about how the console will perform. In fact, you can’t really judge the console until after the holiday season.
  • How much is Sony’s margin out of the PS4? Is it actually making money of the console itself or is it losing money?
  • How will Microsoft’s Xbox One affect the PS4’s sales? The Xbox One will be available, by the way, on November 22nd.

For now, Sony’s investors should be happy – the question is, will Sony disappoint them come next year?

This article (as well as all other articles on this website) is an intellectual property and copyright of Fadi El-Eter and can only appear on fadi.el-eter.com.

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