Lateral Thinking - Reserve or Release

This article was originally written for Sideath's blog. Republished by authour for CWN.

Are reservations a sign of weakness?

Gamestation recently have stopped taking Xbox 360 reservations. My branch are getting about 35 and all have beeen reserved - a full month before the launch date! Anyone who wants an Xbox 360 before Christmas has three choices - eBay, kill for it, or go to ASDA.

My local branch of ASDA will recieve 5 Pro Packs of the Xbox 360 when they are released. They're not taking reservations. I'm willing to bet that if I walked into ASDA on the 25 November before noon then there is a perfectly good chance of getting my grubby mitts on one. It would be amusing to see the queues of people outside GAME, ePlay et al while I simply stroll into ASDA and pick up my Xbox 360 - not that I will of course, if the price/timeline of the Xbox is anything to go by.

But still, what of Reservations? Of course, I admit, I did reserve the Nintendo DS, and the due fact that I did not reserve my Sony PSP meant that I had to wait for a month before I could get one - however, surely a reservation would mean that you need an item (ie. as a drug or tobacco effect) rather than simply desiring it? After all, no-one reserves a new screwdriver or the lastest printer out on the market, do they? Why does this phenomena occur for the videogame market? Why this constant obsession? Do we blame the videogame industry for not making a great enough supply to meet demand, or do we blame ourselves and our constant addiction to videogaming?