This year is exactly the same. Both Playstation 4 and Xbox one are impossible to be found 2 weeks before Christmas celebrations.
Some will say that this is a strategy, and that suppliers are actually planifying this stockout in order to raise the demand.
Obviously, one customer eager to purchase a Playstation 4 has no intention to by any other hardware, so there are little chances the customer will turn to a competitor.
But still, is it a good thing to leave customers unsatisfied like that? Also Sony is going through a retailer to sell those, and creating stockout is something retailers hate ( customer disatisfaction, loss of sales...).
Also Sony has hence never been able to experience 100% full potential of its launch sales, and therefore it is difficult for Sony to have clear data on the level of missed sales.
Probably Sony has hard time to produce that many hardware in such a period of time but they must anticipate.
This is the reason why I don't think Playstation is making the right call, and that this stockout strategy is actually bad for the company.
