[asadotzler]

"Sold out" is mostly meaningless if we don't know the inventory they moved. Perhaps 5,000 units have rolled off the line over the last week and those all sold. Or maybe 200,000 sold out in one day. We simply don't know what it means to sell out.

My guess is they could sell low double digit thousands per month, in which case selling out temporarily in some regions is an entirely meaningless measure hardly worth an article or even a tweet.

[jim33442]

It's not normal for things like this to sell out. Most businesses want to be able to fulfill the sale when the customer is already on their site ready to pay, not make them look elsewhere. Either they're having inventory problems, or they're testing pricing, or they're trying to build hype. It's interesting even though I don't care to own a Steam Deck.

[asadotzler]

It's quite normal because they do have inventory problems because component suppliers are stretched ridiculously thin. Apple, the master of one of the biggest tech hardware supply chains in the world, couldn't get Sony to step up beyond 1M display panels in year one of Vision Pro component production. Now with RAM being not just expensive, but hard to come by, those problems are exacerbated beyond the challenges of the niche display panels that have no market outside of these HMDs. When BOE, Sony Semi, Samsung and SeeYa have maxed their factory space making simple displays that sell at scale, they're not in a hurry to devote precious production lines to niche panels with terrible yields.