TRios_Zen said:
So what Pachter is saying is that Sony is deliberatly shorting supply of the single Move controllers, making only the bundles available, in an effort to spur demand of the higher priced sku. Thus by "shorting" availability of the Move controllers, they are manufacturing a "demand" for them that they actually could meet. He further compares them to Microsoft, stating that Microsoft is doing this same thing (stand alone cameras to bundles) but that they started doing it first, and that is why Sony is "following" them. Please note, I've made no comment on my feelings on what he said, just trying to clarify what was stated, as it seems there are a few in this thread that are confused by it. |
But that makes no sense whatsoever. If you are only in the market for a Move controller, then it means you already have one Move controller and a PSEye (and in the USA probably a copy of Sports Champs). The last thing you're going to do is go ahead and buy another starter pack. So, shorting the stand alone Moves isn't going to manufacture more demand for the starter pack. Then there are people who want to get the starter pack, but who know that the best experience with Move requires 2 controllers, so if they can't get an extra Move at the time of buying the starter pack they might just decide to hold off getting themselves set up for Move until they can get the whole package. I think Sony just plain screwed up and shipped too many starter packs and not enough stand alone Moves. Nothing sinister or conniving.
Same applies to stand alone Kinect vs Kinect 360 bundles. Though in the case of 360 there is some logic to it in that someone with a phat white 360 looking to buy a Kinect could be convinced to go for a 360s Kinect bundle: upgrade to a prettier and [probably] more reliable 360 and get Kinect at the same time. MS might have put such a cunning plan into action, but again I think it's just as possible that MS wasn't really expecting their hard core base to buy that many stand alone Kinects and they were looking to get an expanded audience to buy the console bundles. So they shipped a larger proportion of bundles and a smaller proportion of stand alones. They seem to be meeting the console bundle demand, more or less, but they underestimated the stand alone demand. So probably nothing to see here either.
Whatever the case I don't think manufacturing shortages to create the illusion of a higher demand than is the reality is really much of a sales strategy. Move will sell long term because people like it, or it will fail to sell long term because people don't like it. Same with Kinect.
What makes Pachter an idiot on this is thinking that there's any legitimate gain to be made through creating an impression of shortages. Managing supply to ensure there's hardware available every week through to the new year is important, and if things really are tight then you do have to create shortages on really high demand weeks, but that's not a manufactured shortage, that's an actual shortage.
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