They are not creating the shortage purposefully more of they made a  mistake. My guess is Sony estimated the demand for PS3, so the manufacturing processes were created for their estimation. Because if they manufacture too many it's inefficent in labor, etc. But the demand was more than they thought it was. So they are kind of in a screwed position.

But, what I'm saying is just theory from my classes in college and boredom to analyze. It could be, the Sony CEO was taking a crap, and decided "hey! lets make a shortage!" :P

And I don't want to sound like I know everything, but I could be wrong. That's just what I got out of it.

Okay so let me get this straight. Your accusing me of being wrong when i used Sources numbers from the op?! How does that make me wrong?

As pointed out to you in this thread by at least three different people those are the correct numbers.

So maybe you should think a bit before you go for the "let's slag someone off" button. Because right now you look a bit like one of those net people who flame people for being wrong when they themselves are wrong, and we love those people right?

No you are right, that is in a nutshell how mass manufacturing works. Forget all the silly conspiracy stories that are put forth here. The truth is very simple and applies to any product that is mass manufactured. Taking the PS3 as an example of such a mass product:

(Possibly long) before every new fiscal year, all Sony regions have to anticipate the demand for every quarter of that fiscal year. The total demand is then cross checked by Sony HQ and that amount of units goes into the order/production chain (which starts long before the first PS3 is manufactured). In the following quarters of the fiscal year, every region gets its shipment according to the quantiies anticipated. There is no "let's make more/less PS3 because in Buttfuck/Arizona we sell like crazy/not at all). Now we have seen that the global financial crises did not deter enough Americans from buying, and more units were being sold than anticipated. Bad luck for America, they got what they ordered and there is no chance in hell more units suddenly turn up, because every region gets exactly what they ordered. Since all the other regions seem to sell roughly what they anticipated, noone is going to give up some of their stock in favour of Sony America (apart from the fact that *minimum-loss-of-money" rerouting stock would be a logical nightmare).

On another note, you might ask: "Why don't they just manufacture more units if the demand is so high?" Neither Nintendo (who sell its gadget at quite some profit) nor Sony (who might lose a few $ on the PS3) do it. Of course Sony could manufacture more PS3s. Hoever, these units would be manufactured outside the normal mass manufacturing chain rules (which I am not going to lecture about). I'd estimate such "Panic manufactured PS3s" would cost somewhere between $400 and $500 - obviously neither Sony (nor Nintendo) is going that lossy road.

The question is now: Did Sony (America) anticipate enough demand for the fiscal year that just started? The fact that you see no shortages now says nothing, because you see the first batch of the new units that were ordered for the first quarter. When shelves start to appear empty again in 1-2 months, then Sony (America) has a problem - a problem that may continue into summer/fall (and we already had some warning messages from the US guy that this might be the case).

And lastly, a lot of people seem to think that Sony makes boatloads of money selling PS3s in Europe, covering for losses for PS3s sold in America. There are two things that are wrong here. Firstly, every world region fights on its own, there is no "let me give you some money because we have enough and you don't", every region is responsible for reporting black numbers. If you report too many red numbers for your region, you are out... Secondly, PS3s in Europe sell for around $480-$550 final price. The final price includes local taxes (8%-28% depending on country) and store margins (18%-25%, depending on order size). if you remove these percentages, Sony roughly gets $300 per console everywhere in Europe just as in the States.