| TruckOSaurus said: Well do you? i've seen it said time and time again in various sales threads but I somehow can't bring myself to believe some people actually believe it. I mean, I could understand saying it to rile up Nintendo fans, it's surprisingly effective and fun but not actually believing it. To be clear, I'm not talking about Nintendo setting aside units for big release weeks, I'm talking about people who really think Nintendo has loads of Switch consoles hiding somewhere and they're not shipping them to retailers who are begging for supply just because they want game sites to publish articles about stock issues. To me that is pretty crazy but who knows maybe some users here can make sense of it? |
| Cloudman said: I'd like to hear a logical reason as to why Nintendo would deliberately do this. |
| pokoko said: No. A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush. That sale you failed to make today might not be there tomorrow. Does a shortage drive demand somewhat? Does it create a positive impression for your product? Yes, but it's not worth the risk to purposefully manipulate the market and it's an awfully short-sighted tactic. The upside is relatively minor and probably doesn't even make up for the downside--and that's without considering the logistics of screwing up your own supply chain. |
pokoko said:
Well, to be fair, Nintendo does have a long history of manipulating the market. They did a LOT of dodgey stuff in the 1980s that left a sour taste in the mouths of consumers and got them in hot water with various governments. They've undersupplied retailers all the way back to the NES, both with consoles and with games. At this point, it's pretty much expected. Personally, I think it means that Nintendo cares more about their bottom line than anything else. They'd rather a supply deficit than to have an over-supply on the books for the year. |
No. Even in the period of its shadiest behaviour, Ninty wouldn't have created artificial shortage of its consoles.
People are mixing two true things to create this inexistent third behaviour:
1) The first, as pokoko writes, is a thing of the past, in NES times, less and less in the following gens, Ninty not only kept cartridge production monopoly and stroke horribly one-sided deals with 3rd party devs, for example forcing timed exclusives on almost all of them, it also strictly controlled the amount of cartridges it supplied to them, up to creating shortages for some of the most successful 3rd party titles. Added to the aforementioned deals, it's how it ruined its relationships with 3rd parties.
2) To avoid overproduction, Ninty is prudent in its initial predictions, then, after observing demand trend for some time, it ramps up production and shortages either disappear or at worst happen for very short periods, only during higher than expected demand spikes, like it happens to any other successful product.
