GameSpot COO Dan DeMatteo and CEO Richard Fontaine have given very strong views about the Nintendo Wii and the Sony PS3 respectively. They explained why they felt that the Wii shortage was intentional and why the PS3 launch numbers in Europe were over hyped.
On being asked about the Wii, DeMatteo said, “I believe that next week we get our first allocations of Wii and DSs and we are quite pleased with those numbers. We were concerned about the dryness here in March, but it looks like April is going to be good. I do not think it is going to be an issue…and this just my opinion, but I think (Nintendo) intentionally dried up supply because they made their numbers for the year. The new year starts April 1, and I think we’re going to see supply flowing.”
As for CEO Fontaine, he explained about the PS3, “I think the summary of (recent discussions with European directors) was a very good launch, falling somewhat short of what they would determine to be a great launch. We were probably more happy with how well we did selling through as a percentage of our reservations than perhaps some of the mass merchants, but I think we’d tab it exactly that way. We have no knowledge from Sony that there will be a price cut, however if sales slowed they probably have enough profit in that unit that they could reduce it to that $99.”
Both were present at the investor conference call following GameStop’s financial results. The games retailer did post good fourth quarter and year-end results for fiscal 2006 surpassing the $5 billion mark for the year.