Yeah, there is, but nobody wants to do it.
It's really simple. Between the time you announce a product and the time you release it, you allow every single person who has an account with your online store to put their name on a list, once.
When you actually know your shipment size, you randomly select X people from that list and email them to let them know they have 24 hours to commit to an order.
Whoever doesn't commit can go back into the pool, and you repeat until your shipment is sold out. If there's still more demand than supply, keep the pool and allow people to add themselves to it if they wish.
Pros:
- Completely fair to people who actually sleep at night
- Much harder to game (unless they're willing to sign up for 100 accounts, scalpers are not going to get 100 chances)
- Doesn't require a retailer to invest in huge scale-up tests
Cons: (I guess?)
- Solution has to be developed (but consider you're already spending a bunch on reliability engineering and scaling up just to handle the spikes)
- People who get the item from another retailer can still buy it from you and sell it on the secondary market
- No news stories about how nobody can buy the goddamned thing
I mean, am I missing anything?
I don't claim any rights to this, by the way. If any retailer wants to implement this, be my guest. Maybe send me a Super NES if you like the idea? Because I didn't fucking get one last night because I was fucking sleeping.