Quote:
Originally Posted by Gihgehls
The rush to buy consoles isn't made artificial just because people intend to turn them over on ebay. The whole idea of selling them on ebay wouldn't be viable unless there were people there to buy them. This is a simple case of supply and demand. The people on ebay are fuelling the demand, and Sony only had something like 300,000 units ready at launch. That's why these people camped out all week. Nintendo had something like 800,000 ready.
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It would be artificial if the units that end up on ebay didn't get bid up and these early buyers lose money. A quick check shows the average to be about $1000.00 so the speculation may pay off. It also may mean that Sony could have charged $1000 for the first few months but people would cry about Sony price gouging. That does not mean that the rush isn't artificial since even an artificial rush results in a rapidly reduced general supply which in turn drives up the price.
Consider a company IPO. Investor A buys a lot of stock early because he thinks other people feel the company is popular and demand for the stock will be high. This investor buys the stock even though he doesn't think the company will do well in the long run but, it is important for him to buy early when they feel the price is at a low. If enough investors are doing the same thing as investor A, you have a situation where the initial rush is artificial because the demand is artificial. One might call this a bubble and some people will certainly make a few bucks. I can only hope they do since, as I said before, they certainly put in the time.
Also note that the latest numbers I can find would show about 40,000 PS3 units and 130k Nintendos still on the shelves if your numbers are correct. Maybe they are the less desirable PS3s or people just don't know where to find them. Either way, it couldn't matter much less to me, I've just been over to planetboredom for a laugh.
http://www.planetboredom.net/video.php?id=2944