[axaxs]

Honest question...why are either AMD(or Nvidia) or retailers not raising their prices until stocks build?

It seems like econ 101, prices rise when demand outstrips supply. But that isn't happening at the retail level. Instead scalpers are buying them en masse, and doing the price fixing.

Something I've always wondered, but wasn't sure who to ask that would know nuances of doing so.

[jfim]

Multiple reasons. It wouldn't look good on nVidia if they were to raise prices too much. Between being known as a company that doesn't have enough supply/is too popular sounds much better than a company that price gouges their customers.

Gamers are also perceived as being loyal to a given brand, which is always good to ensure a certain level of demand and interest for their future products. If they can't buy a given product, they hardly can be loyal to that particular brand.

Miners are more rational actors, and will pay as much as needed to secure as much supply as they possibly can, as long as they can turn a profit. If the price of cryptocurrency is high, so is the price that miners are willing to pay.

While this sounds good for nvidia, miners will also dump unprofitable cards on the used market, therefore competing against new products from nvidia. If the price of cryptocurrency crashes, as it has done before, then there might be tens of thousands of used GPUs all flooding the market at a certain time. As these would be priced to sell, and the miners have likely turned a profit on the card already, any amount of money that they can get on selling the cards is just pure profit.

Nvidia probably doesn't want to have this sword dangling above their heads. It would be pretty bad for them to announce a new series of GPUs at the same time that the cryptocurrency market crashes, as they'd have to compete against used GPUs at fire sale prices.

[sombremesa]

I assume you mean "aren't".

The reason this happens is because AMD/Nvidia can't sell for $X to person A and $X*10 to person B depending on how much they want something (there are some caveats here, such as being able to price discriminate consumers and enterprises, but some distinction must exist within the product for that). As such, if they price all their items at $X*10, they run the risk of not being able to sell their stock - a risk they are taking for no reason, since they already priced in the profit they wanted at $X.

Additionally, the appearance of scarcity actually works in their favor, since it keeps up demand.

[axaxs]

Sure, I edited it probably after you started a reply. But what about retailers, like say Best Buy. If they know people are just reselling an item for $1000, why not just price it at that? Do they have contracts preventing that, or would it just be bad PR?

[ev1]

Newegg already upcharges significantly past MSRP (they scalped the shit out of RX580's back during the RX580 days a few years back), and _forces you to purchase items with incompatible, unreturable bundles_. Like imagine being forced to buy a last-gen Intel mobo to be allowed to purchase a Ryzen. No refunds, no returns, no exchanges.

[xiphias2]

It's the same reason why you can't get a COVID vaccine for $1000: fear of reputation problems.

Tesla is doing supply/demand based pricing though, so I think NVIDIA could get away with it as well as long as it gets the communication right.

[retrac]

I suspect that has more to do with the fact that Pfizer, Moderna, etc. would find themselves nationalized if they did that. In marked contrast, Pfizer has had no qualms in the past pricing as high as the insurers will pay, with things like their HIV drugs.

[xiphias2]

Isn't Bill Gates working on getting the price of HIV vaccine (and all other vaccines) down by joining all the poor countries of the world together in an organization?

It's sad that Pfizer doesn't do that from itself though :(

And of course the HIV vaccine is not working yet, but the research is promising.