‘Unprecedented levels of pre-orders’ states Sony’s UK VP

It's no surprise at this point that Sony has been doing somewhat better when it comes to relaying information to their consumers, and therefore seeing that translate into pre-order sales at various retailers.

Fergal Gara, the VP of Sony Computer Entertainment of UK and Ireland has spoken to gamesindustry.biz, and revealed some pretty awesome info on pre-orders in the UK.

When asked how many units were allocated for the UK in pre-orders, he replied with:

The only thing I would say is Andy [House] quoted a number last night for pre-orders, in fact he quoted a low end number, he said 'in excess of.' What I will say is that the UK represents a significant proportion of that, we're talking unprecedented levels of pre-orders that we haven't seen in 20 years in this business.

The pre-order phenomenon is a reasonably recent one, or certainly growing in recent years – but it does mean that demand is well ahead of our expectations as they were earlier in the year so our internal conversations are now all about securing volume to maximise the number of gamers we can satisfy on that day one or close to day one. It's a problem but it's a good problem to have.

There will be some frustration around it and we know that we'll have to do our best to satisfy the demand and outside of that manage the frustration that may result if we're not able to meet all of it immediately. It's a good problem to have but a problem, and we don't like to let anybody down.

The bolded quote is actually quite remarkable. It could be just a little bit of company white lie, or an exaggeration, but given how great Sony has been doing, popularity-wise, it's not hard to imagine that what he's saying is largely true.

Kudos Sony!
Son