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

mjk45

Currently Offline

31,082

4875 posts since 26/05/08

Recent Badges:

The High Flyer Earned 40 badges.
8 Years Has been a VGChartz member for over 8 years.
Vice Free Managed to avoid being banned for 6 months.
13 Years Has been a VGChartz member for over 13 years.
So You Came Back For More, Huh? Logged in a second time.
MasterRater Score a total of 250 games in your collection.

mjk45 on 17 January 2017

Boutros said:

RolStoppable said:

It's perceived as an attack because it strongly implies that there wouldn't be much demand otherwise. It's also an accusation that is pretty much exclusively thrown at Nintendo.

The link you provided here doesn't offer any more substance than current accusations, it only proves that the accusations date back to the NES era. Nintendo manages to create a hit because they do something new, then demand outstrips supply. Correctly and accurately gauging demand is not possible when there is no proper precedence for a product. People like to use the Wii as an example for artificial scarcity, but independent market analysts who do nothing but analyzing sales data had the Wii at 30m tops for its entire lifetime. Even the best analysts were off by a tremendous margin, so there can't be a reasonable expectation that demand could be correctly and accurately gauged for the Wii. For the NES, it's the same story. The home console market at the time was declared to be dead and to never return by market analysts.

I would be willing to give people the benefit of the doubt, if there were accusations that Sony is trying to create artificial scarcity with PS VR; not that I believe that, but people who love this theory should jump on it. But as things are, it's a one-way street.

I haven't been following PSVR sales at all so I have no idea beyond assumptions but is there even that much demand for PSVR? I mean even if it was readily available I doubt it would sell that well anyway from what I've seen. Sony probably doesn't want to be left with overstock the way they were with the Move controller. As far as I know the Move controller was way overshipped and in a way the PSVR is to the PS4 what the Move was to the PS3 except way more expensive. So if Sony did create artificial scarcity with PSVR it absolutely didn't have the intended effects lol Did Sony even ship new units since it's been sold out?

at my eb store the second lot of PSVR preorders due early 2017 sold out the minute they became available just from covering those on the preorder waiting list and apparently the 3rd shipment is headed that way and I was told that's nation wide in Australia.

Research shows Video games help make you smarter, so why am I an idiot

mjk45

Currently Offline

31,082

4875 posts since 26/05/08

Recent Badges:

Completed Persona 100% completed profile.
Leaving Limbo 100 posts on the gamrConnect forums.
Pata 100 wall post comments made on gamrConnect.
Not a Crab Purchase for VG$599
Hit And Run 15 comments posted on VGChartz news articles.
50 in One Add a total of 50 games to your collection.

mjk45 on 17 January 2017

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.

Research shows Video games help make you smarter, so why am I an idiot