Fender Squier current status & availability - IMPORTANT INFO - HMX update to OP 6/27

[conejita_diabla]

One flaw I see in this whole "this was planned all along" idea - well, okay, a few. Nothing about this entire situation has felt planned.

If there was a specific production run and that's all they were doing (at least for a first batch), then there 100% should have been phrasing along that line - "limited time run, unless it does really really well!" or whatever.

If there was a specific number planned and that number was made, why didn't a reasonable portion of them ship to the international pre-sellers? Sure, you could argue that they didn't know what the international demand was like when they ordered parts for production, but they sure as hell had an idea by the time they were shipping things out.

If this was as planned, why did Harmonix have no idea it was coming, and why did it take a week to track down an answer?

If this was planned, why did we get conflicting answers from Fender reps ("we've decided not to do more due to manufacturing lead time", "we've sold more than we expected and wanted to go out on a high note", "we've discontinued it due to reasons we can't disclose"). If it were as planned all along, there should've been some sort of party line on this...

Regardless, the whole idea of this being as planned just smells wrong to me.

[Blasteroids]

If there was a specific number planned and that number was made, why didn't a reasonable portion of them ship to the international pre-sellers? Sure, you could argue that they didn't know what the international demand was like when they ordered parts for production, but they sure as hell had an idea by the time they were shipping things out.

Do you think the Best Buy exclusive contract would have stipulated a certain amount of units? If so, then I think Fender would have worked out an international product demand probably based from proportioned past retail sales of software & hardware.

Now look at the manufacturing logic. Fender probably purchases fabrication capacity in a China manufacturing plant. This will be governed by a fixed amount of required units. Each unit requires a certain amount of components from different suppliers, and a small percentage extra would be added for manufacturing failure. These components would most likely have to be ordered months before supply to the fabrication plant. Once fabrication of the units has been completed, then they would be distributed on the slow boat around the world.

So it is possible that Fender would most likely have not known the international pre-order requirements. Once they did find out, then it would be too late since they would have already contractually committed a firm amount of units to Best Buy. Hence the reason for unfulfilled pre-orders, since a greater proportion of products could not be re-directed.

Now for Fender to do another production run, then it would take another fair few months. However, if Best Buy are showing a certain amount of unsold units then they know that they will not be able to shift the same production amount again. So now they will want to only purchase a smaller amount of fabrication capacity and components. Since bulk purchasing keeps costs down, we can say that doing another manufacturing run will be much more expensive for this product. This cost becomes very hard to pass onto the consumer since consumers like to see products get cheaper over time unless there is a feature (or similar) upgrade to it.

Since a lot of product is essentially now contract locked to Best Buy, the international purchasers have a problem. Best Buy also has a problem in that it is not simple to just supply to international customers because of different trading laws, warranty issues, taxes, returns and shipping costs.

The answer? Who knows. I personally doubt there will ever be more units available to international consumers, which is why I grabbed the 'You Rock Guitar'. But I want to be wrong

[jimhenry]

I think blasteroids has laid out a highly plausible picture of what happened with the RB Squier production.

Another aspect may be that Best Buy hopped on board with an offer to buy a large portion of the production run in exchange for the one month of exclusivity AFTER the production quantity was locked in. If Fender got an offer from Best Buy in October or November for an order that was big enough to cover all of the costs Fender had sunk into producing the RB Squier it would be very hard for Fender to turn it down. That could have sucked up a lot of guitars that were originally expected to go into international distribution.

While all this stinks for RB fans who aren't going to be able to get an RB Squier, it seems that all the business people who made bets on this with amounts of their money that would make our heads spin came out smelling like a rose. I hope they did because that makes it more likely that money will be invested in serving the RB market in the future. A glut of RB Squiers with prices being slashed would do far more damage to the Rock Band franchise than the current situation has. If you need proof, check out Rise of the Six String hardware on sale at your local Big Lots store. (Big Lots is a close-out store in the U.S. where you can get a RotSS "real" guitar for $25 rather than the original MSRP of $180.)

[ManiacMark]

I would think a lot of what is going on with the international supply has to do with whatever 'deals' where worked out between the international distributors and Fender: http://www.fender.com/dealers/distributors.php

[Stol-FA-Lin]

Speaking about PG:RotSS, supposedly that sold 160,000 copies (70,000 X360 and 90,000 PS3) How many of those were guitar or band bundles at full price? If they made back their game money on 160,000 copies, and for 2.5% each guitar bundles and band bundles, guitar money on 8,000 colored string section guitars and their drum money on 4,000 air drums and mic money on 4,000 mics or some mix. Why would they care about how many band bundles didn't sell or how many guitar bundles are going used for $35 on eBay and what have you.

Yet compare that to the supposed RB3 sales numbers. X360 550,000 PS3 360,000 Wii 360,000. So say 1.2 million copies. If there's hardly anyone buying the RB3 Squier for any other reason than the game, and if just 1% of game purchasers that wanted and could afford a real guitar got one, that's 12,000 of the RB3 Squiers that could be sold to those folks, or even if we just say that's .1% it's 1,200 of them. (Of course I don't know how many were made or how much they cost to make or how many were sold. So it's all just guesses, the holy grail of the leaderboards aside.)

The difference is likely that RB3 still has people buying it, since it's about 50 bazzilion times better, and plus that there's DLC every week, including pro guitar songs and upgrades. Instead of 3 songs. So there's still room there to grow for things, except for at least one potential wrench in the works, the experiment taking place starting around October.

You're probably all correct about the lead time to manufacturing the RB3 Squier, but that would have to mean they were interested in making and selling them in the first place.

[GNFfhqwhgads]

Speaking about PG:RotSS, supposedly that sold 160,000 copies (70,000 X360 and 90,000 PS3) How many of those were guitar or band bundles at full price?

Few, if any, probably. The game dropped to $5 on its own and $25 with a guitar pretty quickly.

[Blasteroids]

So there's still room there to grow for things, except for at least one potential wrench in the works, the experiment taking place starting around October.

But that experiment has no vocals, harmonies, keys, drums and very likely also no bass. So it will appeal to a very small amount of people and is only directly comparable to RB Pro-Guitar. Most people I know with a real guitar already know how to play it, unlike those who played RB who then went on to purchase a Mustang, Squire or YouRock Guitar.

The difference is likely that RB3 still has people buying it, since it's about 50 bazzilion times better, and plus that there's DLC every week, including pro guitar songs and upgrades.

I think RB, as a platform, did the right thing with the DLC. It does not force people (unlike that Ozzy pack, which I think everyone agreed was a bad thing) to pay extra for pro-upgrades if they only want the 5-button guitar/bass, vocals, keys or drums.

Looking at RB3, PG:RoTSS and RockSmith, perhaps the economical climate is not yet ready to embrace this technology yet due to the costs involved. Or perhaps it is not aimed at the correct market and may have done better if sold as a seperate learning aid to schools and tutors?

Anyway, I think I drifted too much off topic now

[Stol-FA-Lin]

Anyway, I think I drifted too much off topic now

It's all part of the big picture, making assumptions about so much. Perhaps the Mustang will be enough, perhaps some $200 to $400 replacement for the RB3 Squier will arrive, maybe it's all been dropped until next year. GH is supposedly on hiatus, Rocksmith will do what? Who knows about any of it.

[gamer1st]

I've been keeping track of sales of the Squier where I can and have some news to report. Buy.com is still selling the Squier for 279.99 with free shipping, but is selling them very briskly. They've gone from being ranked, (among all items the site sells) way down in the couple thousandth place mark, to being the current #3 selling item on the site this past week. At that rate even a site as big as Buy is bound to go through stock fast.

I'm trying to get some clarification from the mods about helping people with the Squier. My previous offer wasn't site kosher and went away. Hopefully there's something we can do to help the internationals out. (Fingers crossed).

[Krystof]

At this rate there wont be any left by the end of august.

The past year has been a nightmare. Losing my job, planning a wedding that has hit every problem I can imagine, and living in a health hazard apartment dwindled my savings. Thankfully the past two weeks I've been given a break and was hoping to finally pick one of these bad boys up when my finances stabilized. But living in a non-metropolitan area of Canada means I'd have to look online(costing more).

Hopefully there remains some stock until then. I have the mustang, but I find myself forming bad habits that make the transition to a six string impossible.