Nintendo Switch Selling Out Due To Intentionally Low Stock? Think Again

[mjk45]

RolStoppable said:

Boutros said:

Nintendo still hasn't restocked many amiibos for absolutely no reason (except to create rarity of course but that suggestion is apparently not accepted by everyone). PSVR will eventually get more stock until most interested will have had the opportunity to get one (it's only been 3 months since it released and I just looked it up and Sony announced more incoming stock soon). Nintendo knows there's demand for those amiibos that have never seen big restocks but they're still sold out and some of them have never been readily available. For example Roy came out 1 year ago and I never saw him in stock (or I would have bought it) here in Canada. The only way must have been to pre-order him but even those were sold out quickly. So a whole year goes by without new stock for a product that was never supposed to be limited. And that goes for many other amiibos. It's certainly not a production restriction issue at this point or a fear they wouldn't sell.

I think there's fear of overproduction for amiibo, just like there is among smaller third party publishers who see their games sell out (think of JRPGs and other Japanese niche titles), but don't commit to another printrun because the remaining demand might actually not warrant it. Producing more amiibos is also not as simple as printing more copies of discs or cards, not to mention how many different amiibos there are.

There's also no sense in supposedly having a strategy of creating artificial demand and then never providing additional supply for the product in question.

Creating artificial demand so you can increase the price I understand and that is something better controlled by the retailer, and would happen only when they are certain of that demand and the increased prices they can gain . 

Seems to me that there is much more scope for damage than success, you may be trying to create a must have product but unless it truly is, you risk word of mouth driving away customers who would have bought the product day one but missed out and run the risk of losing  some of those customers to your competion. It can't be aimed at die hard purchasers since they are buying it anyway, to me it doesn't make much sense for any of the console manufacturers to go down that road.