Amazon sells out of the NES Classic Edition in less than a minute • Hacker News Board

Re: Amazon sells out of the NES Classic Edition in less than a minute

#121

Post by smaili » Sat, Nov 12, 2016, 5:19 AM UTC

mikiem wrote: post #119

AndrewKemendo wrote: post #3

Clearly thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of gamers were sitting on the product page hammering the F5 key and some random selection thereof got their wish. I highly doubt that. My guess is that third party resellers used bots to purchase them all. Why wouldn't tc come to the same conclusion? Edit. yep here's one on eBay for $500+: http://m.ebay.com/itm/New-Nintendo-NES-Classic-Edition-Conso...

I can confirm that this is a thing... a bigger thing than one might think. I run an IaaS cloud provider and I know off the top of my head several customers of ours who each maintain a fleet of VMs to do this for a variety of products. Eg: Limited edition shoes, show tickets, etc. Some of our customers who do this keep the VMs running and some fire them up only when needed. Some use custom software and scripts and som…

Reminds me of why I still prefer brick and mortar. Yes you may have to camp out, but it definitely has a better success rate than trying to compete against machines.

Re: Amazon sells out of the NES Classic Edition in less than a minute

#122

Post by mangeletti » Sat, Nov 12, 2016, 5:20 AM UTC

AndrewKemendo wrote: post #3

Clearly thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of gamers were sitting on the product page hammering the F5 key and some random selection thereof got their wish. I highly doubt that. My guess is that third party resellers used bots to purchase them all. Why wouldn't tc come to the same conclusion? Edit. yep here's one on eBay for $500+: http://m.ebay.com/itm/New-Nintendo-NES-Classic-Edition-Conso...

I was doing this (refreshing).

I had the Amazon app open on my phone and the website on my MacBook. I added it to my cart from the app at approx 14:00:01 ET, and by the time I clicked the cart and then checkout I got an error message saying the item was sold out.

I was so pissed that this happened, because I had been planning to follow this diligently since the day it was announced, and I had no less than 3 calendar events in my phone so that my day would be replete with reminders. I had the other websites that were supposedly selling it open as well, as a failed backup plan.

I should have written a script.

Re: Amazon sells out of the NES Classic Edition in less than a minute

#123

Post by savanaly » Sat, Nov 12, 2016, 5:26 AM UTC

typicalrunt wrote: post #2

I grok capitalism and even like it. But there are times where it is difficult to like it. In this case, people rushed to buy this product for the sole purpose of reselling it for 8x. What's wrong with our society that some people can be so morally bankrupt and bereft of good sense. In the end, I think these scalpers won't sell for 8x because anintendo will just pump out more product. Still, it is sad to see this happ…

I feel like if you truly groked capitalism, you would be able to point out lots of its flaws, but also to realize that scalping is definitely not one of them.

With supply limited like this, the optimal social outcome is for the X units produced to go to the X people in the world who would value them most, in other words the people who would be willing to pay the most (only exception I can think of to this is if someone values it at V dollars and only has a net worth of W dollars where W In the final accounting with reselling on amazon, the goods end up where they are most highly valued. Sure, if we held a lottery to see who gets to buy the NESs at the sticker price rather than auctioning them, the people winning the lottery would be more happy than the people who end up winning the auction. But as a whole, society would be impoverished since it's an inefficient distribution (no room to prove it in a HN post, but it's not too hard to work out on paper when tallying up the welfare of nintendo, the scalpers and all the people who get to buy the NES under one scenario or the other).

Re: Amazon sells out of the NES Classic Edition in less than a minute

#124

Post by ianai » Sat, Nov 12, 2016, 5:32 AM UTC

mrfusion wrote: post #70

It seems silly to me to allocate a product by the vageries of refresh rates and server responsiveness. It seems like Amazon could come up with many other ideas for allocating a limited product. There's no rule that says it has to be based on the millisecond ordered. For example how about a game of chance (or skill?) to let people compete for the product? It would feel a lot more fulfilling than an error page. And it…

Was there even any sign that this was going to be under supplied like this? I didn't get that impression from the reviews/previews I read.

Re: Amazon sells out of the NES Classic Edition in less than a minute

#125

Post by ianai » Sat, Nov 12, 2016, 5:34 AM UTC

d23 wrote: post #113

mrfusion wrote: post #70

It seems silly to me to allocate a product by the vageries of refresh rates and server responsiveness. It seems like Amazon could come up with many other ideas for allocating a limited product. There's no rule that says it has to be based on the millisecond ordered. For example how about a game of chance (or skill?) to let people compete for the product? It would feel a lot more fulfilling than an error page. And it…

Eh, or what about loyalty to amazon? If they had honestly messaged me and said that because of the age of my account and amount I had spent that I would get to be part of the first group in line to purchase, I might have even bought one just for that reason. Not that they needed more people buying them, but my loyalty to them would probably only go up.

On the flip side, stuff like this just sours the whole thing. Why have a sign up page to be alerted when something's available if you know it's going to be sold out immediately?

Re: Amazon sells out of the NES Classic Edition in less than a minute

#126

Post by inimino » Sat, Nov 12, 2016, 5:38 AM UTC

typicalrunt wrote: post #2

I grok capitalism and even like it. But there are times where it is difficult to like it. In this case, people rushed to buy this product for the sole purpose of reselling it for 8x. What's wrong with our society that some people can be so morally bankrupt and bereft of good sense. In the end, I think these scalpers won't sell for 8x because anintendo will just pump out more product. Still, it is sad to see this happ…

Why do you think this is morally bankrupt? We aren't talking about wheat, but a superfluous luxury item. Where's the moral argument?

Re: Amazon sells out of the NES Classic Edition in less than a minute

#127

Post by jakobegger » Sat, Nov 12, 2016, 5:45 AM UTC

mikiem wrote: post #119

AndrewKemendo wrote: post #3

Clearly thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of gamers were sitting on the product page hammering the F5 key and some random selection thereof got their wish. I highly doubt that. My guess is that third party resellers used bots to purchase them all. Why wouldn't tc come to the same conclusion? Edit. yep here's one on eBay for $500+: http://m.ebay.com/itm/New-Nintendo-NES-Classic-Edition-Conso...

I can confirm that this is a thing... a bigger thing than one might think. I run an IaaS cloud provider and I know off the top of my head several customers of ours who each maintain a fleet of VMs to do this for a variety of products. Eg: Limited edition shoes, show tickets, etc. Some of our customers who do this keep the VMs running and some fire them up only when needed. Some use custom software and scripts and som…

How do you know that people are doing this with your VMs?

Re: Amazon sells out of the NES Classic Edition in less than a minute

#128

Post by typicalrunt » Sat, Nov 12, 2016, 5:55 AM UTC

savanaly wrote: post #123

typicalrunt wrote: post #2

I grok capitalism and even like it. But there are times where it is difficult to like it. In this case, people rushed to buy this product for the sole purpose of reselling it for 8x. What's wrong with our society that some people can be so morally bankrupt and bereft of good sense. In the end, I think these scalpers won't sell for 8x because anintendo will just pump out more product. Still, it is sad to see this happ…

I feel like if you truly groked capitalism, you would be able to point out lots of its flaws, but also to realize that scalping is definitely not one of them. With supply limited like this, the optimal social outcome is for the X units produced to go to the X people in the world who would value them most, in other words the people who would be willing to pay the most (only exception I can think of to this is if someo…

I do understand capitalism, the point I made was that sometimes I don't have to like it. Scalping included.

I don't need to prove my knowledge to you by pointing out lots of capitalism's flaws. Instead of reading my comment carefully, you decided to teach me about how basic supply and demand operate. Jesus, you are a self-absorbed piece of work.

Re: Amazon sells out of the NES Classic Edition in less than a minute

#129

Post by gaur » Sat, Nov 12, 2016, 5:56 AM UTC

mrfusion wrote: post #68

Why doesn't Nintendo just raise their prices to where supply equals demand? They're leaving So much money on the table for scalpers. Or why not first release an expensive limited edition while they scale up production?

> Why doesn't Nintendo just raise their prices to where supply equals demand?

"Raise prices" is not the solution to all of life's problems.

Re: Amazon sells out of the NES Classic Edition in less than a minute

#130

Post by savanaly » Sat, Nov 12, 2016, 6:05 AM UTC

typicalrunt wrote: post #128

savanaly wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like if you truly groked capitalism, you would be able to point out lots of its flaws, but also to realize that scalping is definitely not one of them. With supply limited like this, the optimal social outcome is for the X units produced to go to the X people in the world who would value them most, in other words the people who would be willing to pay the most (only exception I can think of to this is if someo…

I do understand capitalism, the point I made was that sometimes I don't have to like it. Scalping included. I don't need to prove my knowledge to you by pointing out lots of capitalism's flaws. Instead of reading my comment carefully, you decided to teach me about how basic supply and demand operate. Jesus, you are a self-absorbed piece of work.

I'm truly sorry if my comment affected you negatively, it wasn't my intention. I used to be an econ tutor and sometimes my urge to just type my thoughts that way comes out and I regret that it sounds like lecturing.

Anyways, why do you think that, given all that, scalping is a bad thing then? Isn't getting the goods to where they're valued most a good thing? Who's getting heartbroken here? The people who can't afford one at the market price of $600? But most of them weren't going to get one anyways because of the limited supply. If there's something to not like it's the scarcity, right?