As I said in another post on the subject, this is a terrible thing, but I honestly think we need to be looking towards Sony as being equally responsible in this case.
Sony seems to like to under produce it's new generation consoles during busy shopping seasons, knowing the demand for them cannot be met, in order to generate hype and cause incidents. The idea being that with everyone looking for them, talking about them, and going to extreme lengths to get them, especially since they will be on almost every child's gift list, they will convince people that there must be something going on here and increase interest and demand even further for when Sony finally decides to move enough units to meet the demand. I've been through this pretty much twice now with the PS-2 and the PS-3, both times there was a shortage, and both times we had a lot of crazy incidents including fights, stabbings, scams, and everything else involving them.
At the end of the day here understand that the victim was an opportunist who was doubtlessly selling his PS-4 for well above market value. Like most under the table dealings that go horribly wrong, I wouldn't be surprised if the shooting happened after a disagreement about money when the seller decided to raise the price. At the end of the day this would never have occurred if the situation for this kind of dealing, and the demand causing it, wasn't created by Sony's hype machine.
To be honest Sony has in the past made plenty of excuses about misunderstanding the numbers needed, or a shortage of parts, or whatever else, but at this point there is no real excuse for what's happening, not that many people were actually buying Sony's previous song and dance routines as well.
Don't get me wrong, Sony has a good product, but at the end of the day we're dealing with something tantamount to inciting a riot. Maybe Sony isn't actually shooting someone, but it's pretty much priming the powder, setting the fuse up, and then giving out free matches. As far as I'm concerned it's very much responsible, and the CEO and/or board of directors should be held responsible for it, especially seeing as I expect the shortages to cause even more incidents, I was hearing today that Sony has pretty much said there won't be any more units on the US marketplace before Christmas, which means the units out there will increase in value, and a lot of people will increase in desperation.
Now, some people might be thinking "but it's just an expensive toy!" the thing to understand is that doing this during the holiday season is especially insidious due to the desire for parents to make their kids ecstatically happy this one time a year. What's more being "only an expensive toy" actually fuels the problem because anger builds at not being able to provide something so simple. All of which leads into the hype Sony is trying to farm.
Generally speaking, Sony should not have been allowed to release the PS-4 in the US until it had the supply to meet the demand given the time of year and the previous track record. It happened though, and as I said, the guys who set up this incident, and will share responsibility with any others that occur, should be held responsible.
Apologies for the repetitive rambling, this is just my opinion. It's never going to happen, but I'd actually cheer if the US didn't even bother with proper extradition treaties and pretty much just had some of the SEALS we occupy Japan with round up the CEO of Sony and his board of directors, cuff them, hood them, and fly them down to the USA to face trial... I mean honestly, to me this is the third time this fiasco has played out, I'm sick of it. Honestly though I kind of expect we'll be looking at the same thing in another few years if consoles endure, a Sony shortage during a time of high demand, with a few stand out examples of violence alongside a whole lot of re-selling, and price gouging.
