Microsoft 'working hard' to meet demand for Kinect

[dunno001]

Nomad Blue said:

unknown_soul89 said:

Again how the hell can you be sold out on preorders unless you aren't making enough, the "sold out" is on the supply end 

Aren't making enough, or withholding units/promising only small supplies in the early pre-order stage to create buzz.

Well, to use sample numbers (that are not necessarily indicitive of what Kinect's numbers are), say that I know that I can have 1 million units ready on launch day. If I'm planning on 50,000 stores selling this product, I will tell a company that they can have 20 x the number of stores that I'm shipping to. (For instance, if Gamestop has 5000 stores, I would tell them that I can assure you 100,000 units on launch day.) Since Gamestop has been given this 100K guarantee, they will put up 100K for preorder; once all 100K are sold, it's sold out for release day.

This is what is probably going on. MS told retailers that they can be guaranteed to have X units at release. After a retailer sells X, they can place the order, but it will NOT be guaranteed on release day. And truthfully, for most big box retailers (Best Buy, Gamestop, etc), since they can't charge until it ships, it's actually cheaper to cut off pre-orders rather than answer the slew of questions that will come in asking where someone's "pre-ordered" item is, process the cancellations that will ensue, etc. I'd hazard this is why pre-orders are sold out.