"The price is atrocious, but rest assured it cost US well over $500 to bring it in. In stock Tuesday, 12/19/00"

- Video Game Depot, advertising U.S. PS2 for $579.99

What the heck?! Checking around the net this week, I discovered that U.S. PS2 systems are averaging $600 a pop on various auction and retail sites. That’s $600 for a game system that should be easily available on store shelves right now at $300. Were the shortages of PS2 systems really due to a lack of components, or were they manufactured by Sony to increase the hype and demand for their self-proclaimed miracle system? Here’s my opinion.

First, disregard any statements from Sony saying that they absolutely did not create the shortages themselves. If they did, would they admit to it? No way. Therefore, their statements are not admissible to an argument for either side of this debate.

With that out of the way, let’s look at facts. Fact #1: PS2 sold well during launch week in Japan, and then sales quickly tapered off to almost nothing, leaving many retailers with overloaded shelves full of unsold systems. Fact #2: Having tons of your system clogging store shelves just a few weeks after launch does not look good in the eyes of Joe consumer. He’ll say to himself, "Gee, Joe, if this system is so great, why are they so easy to find?" It seems silly, but apathy breeds apathy, and if people see PS2s sitting on shelves, they will become less likely to want one. Fact #3: Sony created the hype surrounding the PS2 in the states. There is no rational explanation for the hordes of Sonbies who were singing the systems praises well over a year before it launched. Sony flooded the collective conscious of gamedom with reams of praise-laden text regarding the second coming of Playstation. This thing would be the ultimate entertainments system, it would let you jack into cyberspace and live in the Matrix (Ken Kutaragi actually said this in an interview). It would become the central hub of your entertainment life. Sony had nothing to back up these claims. During the period, I lost all respect for Ken Kutaragi, mainly for those incredibly stupid Matrix comments. But obviously a lot of drooling, mindless fanboys bought into Sony’s line completely. Demand had been created for a game system that had nothing to show for itself except for a handful of extremely subpar Japanese titles that bore no resemblance to the computer rendered stills we were feed for over a year before the systems launch.

So, what’s Sony to do? They know that their system isn’t everything they hyped it up to be, and they knew that the majority of the gaming public would finally decide that for themselves once the machine landed in the states and people actually got to play the thing. They didn’t ship demo units to stores until a few days before launch, and even then they included a high-resolution, small monitor to help boost the graphics of the games in display. How would you maintain the false hype and fervor you worked so hard to create?

The solution – you cut the number of systems that ship at launch, guaranteeing that not everyone will get one. Then you promise to deliver a certain number of units every week through the remainder of the year, but never actually intend to fulfill this promise. Instant demand. And, even better, the fanboys who didn’t get theirs aren’t going to take the words of the gaming press that most of the launch titles are trash; they’re going to do everything they can to get their hands on a PS2 of their own and find out for themselves.

The end result of this is simple. Instead of launching the PS2 with plenty of product, which would have resulted in huge sales during the initial week, with demand plummeting immediately afterward, just like it did in Japan, Sony carefully orchestrated a method of guaranteeing that demand for the system would stay high well into the New Year.

It’s a brilliant plan, and it seems to be working, given the fact that idiot savant fanboys are shelling out more than double the MSRP for the system on eBay and other sites across the web. Bravo, Sony – you’ve lost the respect of intelligent gamers across the nation… it’s a damn shame that we seem to be significantly outnumbered by the dumb ones who ate your lies and asked for seconds.