Queues form for the PlayStation 3

[zekrahminator]

With a little more then a week left until the PlayStation 3s is launched in American on November 17th, some hardcore console gamers have officially begun forming the first queue lines. Sony has made sure America will have plenty of PlayStation3s to go around this holiday season, at an expense to the Japanese stockpile. This unfortunately means Sony may not have enough PlayStation3s for Europe for a long time.

Source: The Inquirer (http://www.theinq.com/default.aspx?article=35637)

[jocksteeluk]

typical sony, guaranteed the ps3 will be sold out when released in europe and will not be in stock for a few months after. they have planned on doing this to create an artificial high demand and keep it as high as possible to bump its share price back up, hopefully the eu will investigate this.

[Dippyskoodlez]

This unfortunately means Sony may not have enough PlayStation3s for Europe for a long time.


All you europeans should be glad its taking longer for sony's disease ridden console to infect your shelves :shadedshu

[DaMulta]

I'll stand in line for a couple days if someone wants to buy one for 10 grand......

[ghost101]

typical sony, guaranteed the ps3 will be sold out when released in europe and will not be in stock for a few months after. they have planned on doing this to create an artificial high demand and keep it as high as possible to bump its share price back up, hopefully the eu will investigate this.

That post if utter crap and completely flawed.

[Jimmy 2004]

That post if utter crap and completely flawed.

No need to start getting agressive. Admittedly I may not totally agree with it either but you need to justify what you write with your reasons and be a little more friendly :cool:

[ghost101]

No need to start getting agressive. Admittedly I may not totally agree with it either but you need to justify what you write with your reasons and be a little more friendly :cool:

Okay then since you asked nicely. But since it was such a ridiculous statement i didnt think it deserved any response.

Somehow, he is saying, that if you limit supply you create artificially high demand? Firstly, a definition of what artificially high demand is would be nice, since even that is flawed in itself. Secondly, how does offering 1 ps3 or offering a million ps3s affect demand. PRICE affects demand. Consumers dont go out to the high street and base their purchasing decisions on how many Sony have produced.

The problem here is that the price of the PS3 is too cheap considering how many are available. The reasons why Sony have done this is because a huge price cut would be unfair on people who bought it early, and it would be bad publicity. However, for some reason this doesnt seem to be a problem to nvidia and their new cards since nobody will flame them over it.

Say for example i was selling apples. Currently i can only produce 1000 apples. A 1000 consumers demand 1000 apples when the price is £2. However, i have set the price at £1 at which there are 10,000 consumers who want the apples. This means that 10,000 consumers wait outside my store and only a 1000 actually recieve the item. So in economic terms how has the market cleared. The answer is that the time taken to queue outside is actually a cost to the consumer. To a consumer time equals money. So they have paid £1 for the apple but more than £1 more just queuing up outside (the opportunity cost of waiting instead of doing something more productive). This is also one of the major reasons why price ceilings are nad since there is actually an overall social loss in the economy. Something the USA learnt the hard way with their oil price ceilings in 1979.

This is something Da Multa actually alludes to inadvertently by putting a price on the waiting outside.

I'll also add, Sony's share prices are falling because of the alck of supply. I mean what good is a product which has demand but no products to give. Investors dont like this. Also, there is nothing for the EU to investigate.

edit: Sorry, when i say price ceilings, i mean ones imposed by government or a firm. Eg. Sony will demand that retailers dont price the ps3 above the MSRP/RRP. Price ceilings/floors that are done by suppliers in order to maintain price is different, e.g. what OPEC does, this is actually illegal by the way.

[Jimmy 2004]

I appreciate your explanation and agree with you that Sony do appear to have set a lower price than the market forces would tend to dictate which is unusual and must largely be linked to the fact that Sony are desperate to get Blu-Ray players onto the market (they are one of Sony's creations I believe) -> higher supply meaning lower price.

AFAIK to put it in simple terms artificial demand is essentially demand that only exists because of influences other than the benefit of the product itself, such as types of advertising and people would not otherwise desire a product. I must admit I don't fully understand how a lack of supply could lead to this unless it creates extra hype and makes the PS3 out to be some kind of rare machine in order to tempt more people to buy it, but I find this unlikely so if you could clarify this jocksteeluk I (and I expect ghost101) would be grateful.

[Dippyskoodlez]

I must admit I don't fully understand how a lack of supply could lead to this unless it creates extra hype and makes the PS3 out to be some kind of rare machine in order to tempt more people to buy it, but I find this unlikely

I too have a very hard time believing sony could make this effective... The machine sucks. People will only hesitate to say that when they are sony zealots that think their business decisions are right, because they were a japanese based company....

The 90% of sane people, however, will just go buy a wii thats on store shelves. Not only is the hardware available, but it has games too.

[Jimmy 2004]

Wii all the way for me! Just don't say it as it sounds though... :laugh:

[overcast]

Wii and Xbox for price of PS3 - sounds good to me :)