Same thing happened with the last (I won't say final ) run of Spiderman back in 2010.

An 80 pound gorilla Stern distributor in the States (Betson Amusements for example) puts in an order for say <100 machines and then Stern puts out a press release across the global distro channels to prompt some interest and get the run up to an acceptable minimum number to make it worthwhile. Stern makes some minor cosmetic changes to differentiate them from the previous runs (perception of value adding) then pushes the snowball off the top of the mountain, and stands back to watch.

The smaller distros are then in effect piggybacking off the gorilla due to perceived buyer panic (losing out on securing stock on a small run of machines). This is how Joe at KJWHF in Perth and AMD in Sydney were able to secure the webbed siderail version of Spiderman back in 2010.

It is strictly a business decision to keep the VIP customer happy.