Sony says more of its PlayStation 3 video game consoles are on the way after the initial shipment sold out on Friday, the first day it was available in North America.
"We are getting a second shipment next week, probably around the middle of next week," Matt Levitan , marketing and public relations manager for Sony Computer Entertainment of Canada, told CBC News Online on Friday. "We'll know by Monday or Tuesday when they will be available.
"We are flying in shipments from Japan and China, and will probably ship them directly to retail" instead of to Sony's warehouses, he said.
Levitan expects four or five shipments before the end of the calendar year, estimating each batch will be the equivalent of a quarter of the units available at launch.
He would not cite specific figures, but Sony had previously said 400,000 units should be available in North America on Friday. Canada traditionally receives about 10 per cent of product allocations for the continent, which would mean about 40,000 PS3s were destined for Canada.
But on Thursday night, Levitan told CBC News Online that the percentage of consoles in Canada was closer to eight per cent of the North American total – an estimated 32,000 if the full shipment arrived on time.
That would place subsequent shipments through the end of the year at 8,000 consoles apiece.
Shelves emptied quickly
Canada's largest BestBuy electronics store, in downtown Toronto, saw its allocation sell out in less than an hour to people who had camped out for as long as two days to get their hands on the highly anticipated console.
"There were 100 people who lined up to get a PlayStation 3 and they all got one," Tassos Tsiris, the store's business sales manager, told CBC News Online on Friday.
The location had 80 units of the premium model with a 60-gigabyte hard drive for storing content, which sells for $659.99, and 20 units of the $549.99 20-GB model.
Tsiris said people began lining up on Wednesday and by Thursday afternoon the line had grown to about 350 people.
"At 4 p.m. I started going outside every half hour and telling everyone after the first 100 people that they wouldn't be getting one because we didn't have any more," he said.
Customers brought in from the rain
The electronics retailer rented a corridor that connects the store with the Eaton Centre shopping mall, hired two security guards and moved the game enthusiasts and 100-200 of their friends and family inside out of the wind and rain overnight Thursday.
At 6 a.m., they distributed tickets to 100 lucky gamers and when the store opened at 8 a.m., let them purchase their consoles in groups of 20.
"They were very calm and happy," Tsiris said.
Future Shop, owned by BestBuy of Canada Ltd., took out full-page ads in major newspapers ahead of Friday's Canadian launch, saying its stores would open at 8 a.m. on Nov. 17 and would each "have a minimum of 10 PlayStation 3 units."
But a midtown Toronto store had just eight consoles at launch — six of the models with a 60-GB hard drive, and two of the 20-GB model.
Store staff said they had been told of the allocation on Thursday.
Shipping error blamed
The company's director of corporate communications told CBC News Online on Friday that the problem was due to a shipping error and was not the norm.
"By the time that store actually received the allocation and confirmed their numbers, we weren't able to make the adjustment to make that store have its 10 consoles," Lori DeCou told CBC News Online on Friday.
Sony said it expects to ship 1.1 million of the next-generation consoles to North America by the end of the year.
The PS3 is capable of rendering high-resolution graphics the likes of which are rivalled only by Microsoft Corp.'s Xbox 360, launched last year.
Nintendo Co. Ltd. launches its new Wii console with a motion-sensitive controller in North America on Nov. 19.
