Oldest marketing ploy in the book better buy it now because someone else is gonna buy it out from under you...hahaha
If you was a big camera company and you could sell every camera you made wouldn't it make a whole lot of sense to make sure there was no shortage of cameras available??? Who do these guys think they are Apple??? LOL
No wiser words spoken. Apple is the number one valued company on the planet. This is right out of their play book.
Release as small number. Hype the press, predict shortages and disappointment if you don't pre-order, claim people won't see any till Christmas... yada, yada, yada. Big companies love to copy other big companies that have their act together.
The forums go buzzing with anticipation. Pent up demand is fuelled by the fires of desire. The lucky and talented few post pictures measly mortals only dream of taking, further fuelling the fires. [ the lucky few, would be the Pros, who happen to be NPS members who get their cameras first. Probably 5,000 of them because that was the supposed initial run, which sold out. How convenient! These "Pros" take great pictures, making you think this camera will make even your photos sing!]
Very clever marketing. The resellers have all bought this hype, hook-line-and-sinker. They are all saying you won't see a D800 demo in a LCS till Christmas because there won't be enough to meet the demand. So, the question I ask is, "How does a big company pay the bills selling just hype? At some point, you have to ship. Hopefully, they ship before the big C brings out their next best thing! LOL Otherwise ....
When they do ship, the ship TONS. No more shortages, the panic is then on to sell the production run! LOL
The one thing Nikon really does have going for it is the D4 and D800 have specs that are currently unsurpassed by the competition, so the hype is deserved, to some degree. The prices are competitive as well. The proof will be in the pudding [my daughter keeps telling me not to say this!] I am one of those guys who likes to touch and smell the fresh ink before I plop down a cool $3K for something. Like everyone else, I can hardly wait to see it, but my money stays in my wallet until I see what it can do.