Videogame terminology - What is a SKU?
SKU - Stock Keeping Unit
I few years ago when working at another company, we got emails from management telling us how well we were doing - “And we will be releasing XXX on 4 SKUs”. I had no idea what a SKU was, I asked, and was told it was Stock Keeping Unit. Right, but what does that really mean?
It’s basically a barcode - something that makes it easy for shops to track different versions of the same product.
SKU - Games: game, per platform, per packaging.
If you were to release a game on the Xbox 360 and the PlayStation 3, that would be 2 SKUs. If you were to release it on the PC as a standard
edition and a deluxe edition, that would be 2 SKUs. It’s the same product (more or less), but just gets tracked differently.
Now, I’m also assuming that region releases get their own SKUs too, so an NTSC and a PAL release count as 2 SKUs, but I can’t confirm that. However it works, I’ll still be buying Skate next week.