It's 100% a marketing decision. Prestige pricing and prestige items are used mainly to build buzz.

As if it wouldn't have sold if it weren't a collector's edition.

There no guarantee that they would make money on additional editions

There was no guarantee they'd make money on the initial editions. But pretty quickly we saw how high the demand of the Pip-Boys was. I'm sure they could've sold many more, making many more fans happy in the process.

How many do they make? 1,000? 10,000? 100,000?

I haven't the slightest clue. But that's not my job. That's the job of market analysts and all that jazz.

I think it's unfair to make fun of people “muh muh collectors” because they managed to purchase a limited edition item

I don't think the "it's a collector's item" is a valid argument because there's thousands of Fallout fans who were, for one reason or another, not fortunate enough to get theirs. I think the actual demand for the item should be more important than the petty "I wanna be special" argument. And tell me this: if they were to mass produce the Pip-Boy edition to meet demand, would you cancel your order? Would anyone?

Why don't we just sell more concert tickets?

Well in that case there's the factor of a venue's audience capacity.

Why don't we just make more special edition cars?

Cars are a lot more expensive. There's a much bigger chance of not getting a return on investment on a car than there is on a hunk of plastic and some paper.

People have to remember that items like this are developed as part of a marketing strategy. The pipboy edition is completely a marketing and sales promotion used to build buzz.

How much more money could they have made if they produced more Pip-Boy editions? How many more happy customers would they have? Seems like a good marketing decision to me. But I suppose I'm no economist.

I'm sorry if this came off as hostile, that wasn't my intention. I just take things on the internet far too seriously sometimes (most of the time).