I’ve been following the pinflation a bit.
My view on this: the last year and a half you see LE games selling out in a matter of afew hours! Half of those go to customers who directly flip it on the forums for 3-7K more (remember Gnr CE selling for 20K nib!!, thats 7.5K profit for doing nothing and a multiple of what the manufacturer and distributor makes on selling games.
Not saying it’s bad, it is what happens.
So people buy more games than they need, creating an increased demand for a short period of time. The FOMO buyers see they can’t get the game and pay premium.
A side effect (at least in the EU): the official distributors ‘hide’ their games and tell customers it’s no longer there, also selling their games via forums etc. Honestly, can you blame them? They make a few 1000 cash extra tax free, whereas they would normally make roughly a 1000 via the official way.
Also this results in making it for customers more difficult to get their game. The half of stock was already sold to ‘investors’, then 10-20% disappears via the distributors and only a few games go to real customers.
Now the solution: Take the pressure of the market by increasing the prices. Apparently the market wants to pay 15-20K for a toy.
I would’ve raised maybe even more for a LE to maybe 12K USD, or to the point where your instant pre orders drop to maybe 80% or less.
If people stop buying, the ‘flippers’ stop and distributors will have their normal stock and things will go quiet a bit.
So: a logical step and the increase is not high enough.