Brands like Nintendo, to which a prolonged sense of scarcity is core to its business model, are able to drive interest in products by signaling that they may be hard to find for months or years to come.The next two months are, without a doubt, the most pivotal hardware launch season the video game industry has seen in almost a decade.
But for some reason, the biggest names in interactive entertainment cant seem to solve the simple task of giving consumers an easy and straightforward way to exchange their money for a product. Right now, if you dont have a confirmation email in your inbox for a new PlayStation or Xbox, or receipt for an Nvidia RTX 3080 card, you may not get your hands on one until 2021. Everything is sold out, with little to no information on when the situation may change. These are major brands that have been selling products for decades with long-standing retailer relationships, supply chain management expertise, and vast amounts of data to source from when trying to predict consumer demand and manage global inventories. The aftermath of preorders for the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X and S going live, as well as the initial wave of sales for Nvidias RTX 3080 graphics card online and in select stores, has been nothing short of a disaster. Its created confusion and disappointment at a time when businesses like these should be celebrating such robust consumer interest in their products. Microsoft prepared fans well in advance with proper timing for when Xbox Series X and Series S preorders would go live in their region, throwing shade at Sony all the while. But when the pages went live, errors and other hiccups began to skyrocket. Others said the Microsoft Store was experiencing similar problems before also reporting out of stock messages across the entire Xbox lineup, including the new Xbox All Access subscription. Many of these problems are the same issues that plagued Sony. Nvidia publicly apologized for its disastrous RTX 3080 launch, saying, We were not prepared for this level, nor were our partners. We may see a similar rush to hawk overpriced PS5s and new Xbox consoles come this November when both devices officially launch. Lets be honest: PS5 preorders could have been a lot smoother. Over the next few days, we will release more PS5 consoles for preorder retailers will share more details, the company announced after the initial wave of preorders, which some retailers pushed live a day ahead of schedule and sold out immediately. With record demand, companies like Microsoft and Sony could very easily implement a lottery system or any other manner of fairer preorder processes. Or they could allow retailers to disclose how many consoles they have, among other ways of helping manage consumer expectations. Instead of telling people a product is sold out and hoping theyll check back at the right time without any idea when that might be, Oculus is transparent about when it expects the product to arrive and is still taking orders. Apple does the same every year when it launches new iPhones, smartwatches, tablets, and other devices. Sony claims more PS5s will be available through the end of the year, without offering any concrete details as to what that means including how many, through which retailers, and whether those units will arrive on or around launch day or perhaps weeks or months after. Microsoft did the same on Wednesday morning, saying more consoles to be available on November 10th without any indication of where, including whether Microsoft means limited in-store options or more consoles for online retailers. The video game industry is fiercely competitive, and a primary motivator for even companies as large as Microsoft and Sony is getting to signal to investors, analysts, and consumers that a product is flying off the shelves and almost impossible to find. Immediate sellouts for these companies is a positive development because it means demand is higher than supply, and they dont have to worry about producing units that sit unsold on store shelves or retailer warehouses.
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