Comment on Some speculation on the Steam Controller and scalpers
ericwdhs@discuss.online 4 days agoUnlike some comments here, I don’t think this is a “test run.” Valve just doesn’t like to sit on inventory. Where most companies let some stock build up before opening the flood gates, Valve just puts a product up for sale when the first shipping container comes out of the factory. Many customers end up feeling left out if they can’t make the first wave, but technically the majority of customers get the product earlier than they otherwise would have, so I’m sure Valve sees it as a win-win.
We’ll probably see a steady supply of similar batches for a while. The Deck preorders shipped much the same way.
sp3ctr4l@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 days ago
Yeah, people in general seem to not understand that stock sitting in a warehouse = you burning money to pay for renting that warehouse, or space in that warehouse.
You have to be… mega-giant huge, your own logistiscs system, for that to basically not be the case, you have to be Amazon, Walmart, something like that.
Even then, that factor still exists, its just mitigated by the overwhelming scale.
And actually, with… oil/gas basically now permanently notched up to another tier, even in the best case scenario… this pressure just gets worse.
Also, even before the Deck, the Index was basically the same way.
ericwdhs@discuss.online 4 days ago
Yeah, I work at a plant where this is an ongoing concern. If we overstock product, we have to rent trailers to store the excess. The price works out to about $12 per pallet per month. It’s not much, but it’s also not nothing, and if we were in a more urban area, I could see that price quickly getting higher.
sp3ctr4l@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 days ago
Yep, you got it.
And yep, high property value areas?
Yep, gets worse fast.
You end using something along the lines of an overflow lot, and that overflow lot probably doesn’t have the same level of access, security, reliable climate control, etc.