It's pretty obvious that the main reason for the price increase was as a psychological tactic to keep current pre-order buyers from canceling. $9K is an arbitrary number, he could have made the price $10K or $11K on the Smaug SE and it wouldn't have mattered. Hardly anyone is going to order one of these at $8.5 or $9K and Jack knows it. He also knows that it will be a long while until the current orders are built so he's trying to artificially inflate the value of the pin to keep existing buyer's in because any new orders won't be built for a long time so may as well throw them a bone by making them think their game is worth more $. It's the same thing he did on WOZ. I remember when he was talking up how some people were paying over $10K for WOZ on the secondary market which made people think that maybe they should stay in and wait because they don't want to cancel a $6500 spot for a game that Jack says is worth $10K plus. As it stands I think WOZ is a $6500-$7500 pin NIB which is exactly what 95% of buyers paid when they pre-orderd. I think Hobbit should have been priced the same ($6500 pre-order, $7500 regular price) which would have been a fair price considering what you get. I'm sure once the game is done and Keefer works his magic on software it will be a very good game. I just think he's about $1K high on the prices which is what will make me sit and wait it out for a HUO example in a couple years.