What are the reasons in your opinion? I can see that it might give them a bad reputation, but that could be mitigated by parting with most of the profits for charity.
Or are they trying to create an image of scarcity and desirability?
Or I didn't want to talk about pre-production. I meant to talk about the begin of the normal production run, where demand for hyped devices (say: Wii, Nintendo DS, iPhone, iPad) far outstrips supply.
By the way, it may be rational for companies to let this happen, since mass production facilities cost a lot of money to set up, and they have to aim at the longer term demand instead of the spike at the beginning.
Or are they trying to create an image of scarcity and desirability?