They’ve been in the gaming business for years and yet they release a product before they have enough of them? Every year it’s the same thing, people stand in line to get the hot new toy for Christmas and then after Christmas there are thousands of them left over.
I remember thinking during the Cabbage Patch Doll craze that these parents were insane to put themselves through the lines and the fights and the mayhem for an ugly doll. And then I had Samantha and she wanted a mechanical cat for Christmas but I couldn’t find them anywhere. I asked a clerk where they were and he looked at me like I was insane because they couldn’t keep them on the shelves and why didn’t I know this? So, I did what any sane mom would do, I told Samantha she would have to wait until after Christmas for it because I couldn’t find them. She was disappointed but OK with it. I had a better understanding of what motivated the parents but I think teaching kids the value of waiting for something and handling disappointment is important and an even better gift than the cat.
Then a week before Christmas, we were in PA and I said to Doug, “There’s a Toys R Us. I think I’ll see if they have them.” And I was surprised to see that they had a whole shelf of them. I guess it was popular in some areas but not in others. She was pretty happy to get the toy but she hardly played with it, so I’m glad I didn’t wait in long lines and fight another mother for it.
And I certainly wouldn’t stand in line for days for the privilege of paying $500 for a game:

Armed thugs yesterday robbed a line of people waiting to buy the PlayStation 3 in Putnam, Conn., and a man who refused to hand over his money was shot in the chest.
In Palmdale, Calif., police shut down a Super Wal-Mart Stores outlet after a line of people waiting for the new game console got out of control. In Tysons Corner, police fired pepper spray toward a crowd of about 200 people who rushed the locked doors of a Circuit City Stores outlet before it opened.
Forget video game violence, Sony Corp.’s new PlayStation 3 delivered a dose of real-world insanity yesterday as it hit retail shelves across the country — and sold out moments later. Low supply led to long lines and short tempers outside retail outlets.
Sony delivered 400,000 units of the PS3 to the United States for the launch and said it would ship 2 million units worldwide this year.
The low supply, caused by a component shortage, has sparked a demand so high that the $500 and $600 devices were selling for thousands of dollars on the online sites eBay and Craigslist.
EBay spokesman Hani Durzy said 500 auctions for the PS3 had closed as of early yesterday afternoon, with an average selling price of $2,700. A search for “PS3” turned up 11,000 auctions on the eBay auction site yesterday, including one that listed the console for the “buy it now” price of $10,000.
[…]
Another new PS3 owner, Michael Torres of Bethesda, said he was too exhausted to take the console out of the box yesterday. Torres and his wife had been camping out at Circuit City since Tuesday. At some point, he came to regret the urge to get a new PS3 no matter what, but he also didn’t want to give up his place in line.
“I would never, ever do that again,” he said. “You’re under a tarp, sitting there with the rain pelting down on you — you’re asking yourself ‘why?’ and you’re not coming up with any good answers.”

I wonder if the product is living up to this type of hype and if the company will be selling enough in the long run or did this hype generate more demand than they would have had?