November 22nd: A Day of Woe

November 22nd: A Day Of Woe

It wouldn't take a minister from the Department of the Bleedin' Obvious to tell us that the launch of Microsoft's Xbox 360 will be a major event come November. Months of hype and speculation will come to a head when all the wild promises receive the ultimate litmus test - the living room benchmark.

Of course whether or not you will be able (presuming you're willing) to participate in this great worldwide frenzy of Xbox 360 play from November 22nd onwards is another matter. The moment Microsoft began to make grandiose statements about a near-simultaneous worldwide release for the console, releasing it November 22nd in the US, December 2nd in Europe and then December 10th in Japan, I began to groan.

Worldwide releases just haven't been the most successful of late, and by the looks of things nobody has learned their lessons from such gaffes as the PlayStation Portable launch cum fiasco.

In the case of Sony's PSP, one of the worlds most powerful and influential technology companies managed to turn what was supposed to be a relatively simultaneous worldwide release into a six month running gun battle.

Expecting huge demand and fearing shortages, Sony diverted the units destined to hit European shop shelves on March 18th to America, covering themselves against any of the expected shortages.

On the face of it they looked right to do so, having already sold over a million handhelds in Sony crazy Japan. This view was further reinforced when the PSP went on to sell over a half a million units in the first two days on retail in the US.

A significant number not to be underestimated indeed, though there is a catch; in the next five days the PSP only sold another 100,000 units in America, bringing the total number sold in the first week of US release to 600,000; only half of all the PSP's they had stocked up on in North America at European expense.

Things became embarrassing when Sony tried to prevent e-tailors from importing PSP's from overseas, and for the six months between the original March European release date and the eventual September 2005 release all European gamers had to console themselves with were constantly broken release date promises and court circuses involving importers and the Big-Bad-Sony.

Perhaps I tell a slight lie when I say that nobody has learned the lesson of the PSP and worldwide releases. You can bet your pre-order that Microsoft will not make the same panicky mistake and fumble the ball with the Xbox 360 release. They're not worried about ensuring that North America has a bountiful supply of the console whilst Europeans starve on screenshot morsels. Instead, in a move that might make Marx oddly proud, Microsoft is going to give us all a handful of Xbox 360's rather than giving one group the lot.

As the release date looms ever closer, Microsoft is admitting that launch volumes of the console reaching retail will be low, and the major retailers are preparing their statements apologising for all the pre-orders they won't be able to fill and printing the "Sorry, we're out of Xbox 360's" signs in bulk.

Launch is a feverish time when you can expect to shift everything you've got. But according to some retail sources, they're not going to have much to shift - between 25 and 50 units at launch for the major retail stores, though insider sources warn that it could be as low as 10 units allocated per shop.

With many having stopped taking pre-orders, eBay is alight with people selling their allocated units for hundreds (if not thousands) above sticker price in order to be assured an Xbox 360 on launch day - and even they may well be disappointed, as retailers usually over-book pre-orders on major products, with the amount not getting through increasing as the demand for the product overall goes up.

Some Microsoft hacks have even been joking that the supply of illicit drugs from South America could be disrupted this November as the smugglers are re-routed to shift Xbox 360's from their Chinese factories to retail outlets around the world.

In this entire quandary lays the real lesson that Microsoft, and the companies which are following in its wake, needs to learn: Worldwide launches simply do not work unless you want to spend all your money on extra factory output and transport capacity.

Nobody likes to have to listen to the smug gits who've got their games or consoles a month or two before your twitch nation. They get to enjoy all the fabulous games whilst all you have is bland press releases, rather stupid countdown-to-another-flash-website marketing campaigns and forum posts detailing the brilliant adventures of the boys who have the big toy.

However worldwide, simultaneous releases put far too much pressure on the infrastructures behind them and in the end something invariably has to break. Instead of pulling off a flawless regional release, holding another regions populace at bay and then executing a flawless release in their territory, keeping everyone happy in the end, companies are letting themselves in for shambolic worldwide releases after which you have a worldwide audience of disgruntled customers.

Until or unless a company has the infrastructure to execute a worldwide release in which launch and ongoing volumes can be maintained, they shouldn't announce worldwide releases a week or two after the plans have been handed to factory floor managers and mere months before said worldwide release.

In major launches, and even just normal holiday seasons, there are always going to be shortages in one form or another. But with these worldwide releases these shortages become famines.

Instead of a shambles of a simultaneous worldwide release I'd much rather sit waiting for two or three months whilst my American colleagues enjoy the Xbox 360 so that when it is released in Europe I'll be assured of my pre-order arriving on time and that I won't have to listen to grim tales of fights on shop floors over the last Xbox 360 in stock.