1 00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:03,560 Man, you know what really melts my popsicle? 2 00:00:03,560 --> 00:00:07,760 Paper launches. You know, when a much anticipated piece of tech 3 00:00:07,760 --> 00:00:11,240 finally arrives, but you can't even buy it anywhere. 4 00:00:11,240 --> 00:00:17,080 And it's not even like these big tech companies like NVIDIA and Sony don't know how much stock they'll have. 5 00:00:17,080 --> 00:00:20,680 So why do paper launches even happen? 6 00:00:20,680 --> 00:00:25,080 Well, even though a company might be aware it's facing a stock shortage at launch time, 7 00:00:25,080 --> 00:00:31,400 they often go through with the planned launch date anyway to build up hype for a product by way of comparison. 8 00:00:31,400 --> 00:00:37,440 You see the term paper launch comes from the fact that the product's release is only talked about on paper. 9 00:00:37,440 --> 00:00:42,880 That is, review samples are sent out to select reviewers who can then write about how awesome the product is, 10 00:00:42,880 --> 00:00:47,680 especially compared to the competition. And the favorable reviews will help drive demand 11 00:00:47,680 --> 00:00:51,520 before the product actually hits store shelves en masse. 12 00:00:51,520 --> 00:00:57,640 For example, in 2003 when AMD released their groundbreaking Athlon 64 CPU, 13 00:00:57,640 --> 00:01:02,480 which was the first consumer x86 CPU to feature 64-bit processing, 14 00:01:02,480 --> 00:01:07,680 Intel quickly responded with a paper launch of their Pentium 4 Extreme Edition. 15 00:01:07,680 --> 00:01:12,880 The new Pentium 4 was given to tech reviewers months before you or I could buy one. 16 00:01:12,880 --> 00:01:16,880 And while it did beat out the Athlon 64 in many benchmarks, 17 00:01:16,880 --> 00:01:22,840 the timing made it seem like Intel was desperate to get a product out to steal AMD's thunder 18 00:01:22,840 --> 00:01:28,040 as well as the performance crown, rather than getting chips in gamers' hands, 19 00:01:28,040 --> 00:01:31,200 people who want them. 20 00:01:31,200 --> 00:01:34,840 And to make matters worse, some paper launches are never followed 21 00:01:34,840 --> 00:01:39,400 by a real large-scale launch at all, which can happen if the company encounters 22 00:01:39,400 --> 00:01:43,720 manufacturing problems that they hope they can fix before the launch window closes. 23 00:01:43,720 --> 00:01:48,280 One example of this is Intel's Canon Lake CPUs, which came out in 2018. 24 00:01:48,280 --> 00:01:52,120 Canon Lake was a 10-nanometer chip, and by the time it launched, 25 00:01:52,120 --> 00:01:57,320 Intel's issues with getting its 10-nanometer process to work were well-documented. 26 00:01:57,320 --> 00:02:00,560 Despite Intel's ambitions, Canon Lake processors only appeared 27 00:02:00,560 --> 00:02:05,720 in a very limited number of laptops and Nux before being discontinued completely. 28 00:02:05,720 --> 00:02:11,280 In the end, the launch was mostly just for Intel to show that they could get a 10-nanometer chip to market, 29 00:02:11,280 --> 00:02:14,840 even though we didn't see a large-scale release of 10-nanometer processors 30 00:02:14,840 --> 00:02:18,320 until the later Ice Lake and Tiger Lake generations. 31 00:02:18,320 --> 00:02:21,640 All right, so many consumers understandably frustrated 32 00:02:21,680 --> 00:02:25,120 with short supply and high prices for new consoles and GPUs, 33 00:02:25,120 --> 00:02:30,760 labeled the launches of items like the RTX 3080 and the Xbox Series X as paper launches, 34 00:02:30,760 --> 00:02:34,800 but this isn't really accurate. After all, it wasn't just reviewers 35 00:02:34,800 --> 00:02:39,720 that got their hands on these products. There was enough supply for regular people to buy them. 36 00:02:39,720 --> 00:02:43,600 It was just the demand significantly outstripped supply. 37 00:02:43,600 --> 00:02:47,960 Of course, this doesn't mean that the NVIDIAs and Microsofts of the world are without fault here. 38 00:02:47,960 --> 00:02:53,080 It just means that the situation didn't meet the strict definition of paper launch. 39 00:02:53,080 --> 00:02:57,240 But the shortages did come at a really inopportune time for both companies 40 00:02:57,240 --> 00:03:01,440 and consumers alike. The pandemic resulted in a surge of interest 41 00:03:01,440 --> 00:03:06,840 NVIDIA games since we were all stuck at home, and once one company rolled their product out, 42 00:03:06,840 --> 00:03:11,600 their competitor couldn't just sit around and do nothing. I mean, imagine how bad it would look for Sony 43 00:03:11,600 --> 00:03:17,500 if they were still using the PS4 to compete with the new Xbox Series's lineup. 44 00:03:17,500 --> 00:03:21,380 And on top of that, fab capacity worldwide has been running out 45 00:03:21,380 --> 00:03:24,980 for a few years now. Demand just keeps on going up for chips, 46 00:03:24,980 --> 00:03:30,820 not just for consoles and gaming PCs, but for phones, IOT devices, cars, you name it. 47 00:03:30,820 --> 00:03:36,260 And all this demand has meant that many fabs have been operating at close to 100% capacity. 48 00:03:36,260 --> 00:03:41,140 The good news though, is that several large chip makers have big expansion plans in the works 49 00:03:41,140 --> 00:03:44,700 that should result in a 20% or even higher increase 50 00:03:44,700 --> 00:03:50,620 in worldwide fab capacity in about five years time for chips built on a 10 nanometer or smaller node. 51 00:03:50,620 --> 00:03:55,020 So hopefully, paper launches and other shortages won't be as common in the near future, 52 00:03:55,020 --> 00:03:59,420 and you won't get ripped off on your PC and your Yeezys. 53 00:03:59,420 --> 00:04:04,060 Do one or the other, you gotta pick one, scalpers! 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